JERUSALEM — Palestinian security officials loyal to moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have asked Israel’s permission to import antitank missiles, grenades and millions of bullets to fight the Islamic militant Hamas, Israeli and Palestinian security officials said yesterday.The request comes as a truce halting the latest deadly round of Palestinian infighting teetered on the brink of collapse, with clashes re-igniting and exacting their first fatality.

Under interim peace accords, Israeli permission is necessary for military equipment to enter Palestinian territories, and a broadbush request by forces dominated by Abbas’ Fatah movement has been on the table for months. Israeli security officials said a detailed request was submitted in recent days, and that Israel was discussing the issue with the US security co-ordinator in the region, Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton.

Palestinian security officials confirmed that a request to bring in military equipment had been submitted.

Officials on both sides spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss confidential military deliberations.

A Dayton spokesman had no comment. A senior Western diplomat said the US “was playing no central role in this matter.” He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss US involvement for the record.

Hamas, which shares power with Fatah in the Palestinians’ coalition government, was not immediately available for comment.

Israel has given permission for weapons imports in the past, most recently in March, but there is widespread opposition to this particular request, in part because security officials fear the equipment would fall into Hamas’ hands and be trained against Israeli targets, officials said. The likeliest thing to be approved, if anything, would be the armoured personnel carriers that also appeared on the list, they added.

Hamas and Fatah have been locked in a violent struggle since the Islamic group unseated Fatah in Palestinian parliamentary elections last year. More than 50 militants were killed in the latest spasm of violence, which was pre-empted more than two weeks ago by a new round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

But the factions’ brittle truce threatened to crumble yesterday, when a Fatah gunman was killed in a battle with Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip. The first fatal clash since the mid-May truce took hold spilled over into daylong clashes in and around the southern town of Rafah, with gunmen firing rocket-propelled grenades and lobbing explosives at rival targets.

Fatah and Hamas blamed each other for the fatal shootout outside a house belonging to Fatah supporters.

Factions, meanwhile, put up roadblocks that divided two main Rafah neighbourhoods into factional enclaves, and Hamas and Fatah fighters took up positions on rooftops in areas under their control.

Medics said at least 17 people were injured in gun battles since the morning, two in serious condition.

Tit-for-tat attacks on faction officials’ homes and kidnappings have been common tactics in Gaza’s internal strife. Before the Rafah firefight, Hamas charged Fatah with kidnapping three of its men earlier in the week and torturing one of them, a bodyguard for Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.