Top Hamas official Adnan Asfour was on Sunday released from Israeli prison only to be arrested hours later by rival Palestinian police forces cracking down on the Islamists in the West Bank.

Asfur was released from Shata prison in northern Israel after sitting 30 months behind bars over suspicions of involvement in fundraising in the occupied West Bank for the movement which Israel considers a terror outfit.

`We went to meet my father at the Jalameh crossing (in the northern West Bank). Half an hour after we got back home, where he was greeted by relatives and friends, armed men of the Palestinian Authority came to arrest him,` his daughter Yamane Asfour told AFP.

Hamas has accused Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas of ordering his forces in the West Bank to arrest hundreds of Hamas members since the Islamists violently seized power in the Gaza Strip in June 2007, routing Abbas`s Fatah movement.

In Gaza, Hamas slammed Asfur`s arrest.

`We consider this a big provocation. We will not ignore the arrest without a harsh response to Abu Mazen and his security services,` Hamas MP Salah al-Bardawil told AFP, referring to Abbas`s patronym.