GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Hamas fighters overran one of the rival Fatah movement's most important security installations in the Gaza Strip today, and witnesses said the victors dragged vanquished gunmen into the street and shot them to death execution-style.

The capture of the Preventive Security headquarters was a major step forward in Hamas' attempts to complete its takeover of all of Gaza. Hamas followed up that victory by demanding Fatah surrender another key security installation.

Hamas also seized control of the southern city of Rafah, the second of Gaza's four main towns to fall into the Islamic militants' hands, according to witnesses and security officials.

The moderate President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, for the first time in five days of fierce fighting, ordered his elite presidential guard to strike back. But his forces were crumbling fast under the onslaught by the better-armed and better-disciplined Islamic fighters.

MACAU — More than $20 million in disputed North Korean funds was transferred from a blacklisted Macau bank today, an official said, signaling a breakthrough in a dispute that has held up the North's pledge to shut down its nuclear reactor.It was not immediately clear where the money was sent.North Korea has refused to move forward on a February pledge to start dismantling its nuclear program until it receives the money that had been frozen by Banco Delta Asia, which was blacklisted by the United States.Washington had accused the bank of complicity in money-laundering by the Pyongyang regime, but gave its blessing for the funds to be freed to win progress on the nuclear issue.But North Korea had not withdrawn the funds, apparently seeking to prove the money was now clean by receiving it through an electronic bank transfer. Other banks have apparently been reluctant to touch the disputed money."Banco Delta Asia transferred more than $20 million out of the bank this afternoon in accordance with the client's instruction," Francis Tam, Macau's secretary of economy and finance, told reporters on the sidelines of a business gathering.But Tam would not say where the money was sent. "We have heard reports in foreign media that the money can be wired via the U.S. or Russia, for example. I think these routings are possible," Tam added.

BAGHDAD — A handful of Sunni mosques were attacked or burned today, but curfews and increased troop levels kept Iraq in relative calm a day after suspected al-Qaida bombers toppled the towering minarets of a prized Shiite shrine.Wednesday's attack on the Askariya shrine in Samarra, which was blamed on Sunni extremists, stoked fears of a surge in violence between Muslim sects. A bombing at the same mosque complex in February 2006 that destroyed the shrine's famed golden dome unleashed a bloodbath of reprisals.The U.S. military said Iraqi forces had arrested the Emergency Service Unit commander and 12 policemen responsible for security at the shrine at the time of the explosions."We must condemn the bad actions of terrorists, and the sons of all tribes must come together and forgive each other," the military quoted Brig. Gen. Duraid Ali Ahmed Mohammad Azzawi, deputy commander for the National Police in Samarra, as saying.Increased U.S. and Iraqi military patrols crisscrossed the streets of the capital, and additional checkpoints were set up along roads leading to Sadr City, witnesses said. Hundreds marched peacefully through the streets of that teeming neighborhood, a stronghold of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. Demonstrations also took place in Kut, Diwaniyah, Najaf and Basra — all predominantly Shiite cities in the south.A ban on vehicular traffic was expected to remain in place in Baghdad until Saturday.

VIENNA, Austria — Former U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, who was elected Austrian president despite an international scandal about his secretive World War II military service for the Nazis, died Thursday, Austrian media reported. He was 88.Waldheim, who was hospitalized in Vienna late last month with a fever-causing infection, died of heart failure with family members at his bedside, state broadcaster ORF reported.Waldheim's tenure as U.N. chief from 1972-82 and his election as president in 1986 were overshadowed by revelations that he belonged to a German army unit that committed atrocities in the Balkans during World War II.While Waldheim himself was not implicated in wrongdoing, his initial denial of such service — and then assertions that he and fellow Austrians were only doing their duty — led to international censure and a decision by Washington to place him on a "watch list" of persons prohibited from visiting the U.S.