The European Commission has demanded guarantees that Hamas would not " divert" electricity revenues before ending an increasingly critical shutdown, which has left hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents without power for four days.

Now Hamas officials have accused the Ramallah-based emergency Palestinian government of fomenting the row as part of the tightening squeeze on what it regards as the illegitimate rival Hamas administration in Gaza.

The EC said it had ceased to supply fuel because it had learnt Hamas was trying to "divert revenues from the production" of electricity in Gaza.

Israeli officials said the freeze on payments had been requested by Salam Fayad, Prime Minister of the emergency administration set up by the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas. Because of Gaza's dire economic problems, only a minority of its consumers pay their electricity bills, with the company collecting about 11m shekels a month compared with the 1.6bn (£200m) it should be collecting. The EU says it pays for 25 to 30 per cent of the supply to the Gaza Strip, worth £4.37m a month.

One point appears to be the destination of VAT, long routinely levied on electricity payments, which the EU's Temporary International Mechanism (TIM) says should be paid only to the Ramallah-based Ministry of Finance.

Kanaan Obeid, deputy director of the Gaza electricity company said the company was continuing to collect taxes as in the past. Mario Mariani, spokesman for the TIM, suggested that VAT appeared to have been remitted to Ramallah until a few days ago, when the agency began its review of the payments.

In central Gaza, Palestinian medics said a missile killed six Hamas militants in a car. The Israeli military said they had fired rockets into Israel. Hamas denied they were guilty of that.