Palestinian PM Fayyad Leaves Hospital

Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad has left hospital after being treated for pancreatic inflammation, a medical source said on Thursday.

The 61-year-old was taken to hospital in Ramallah on Monday with stomach pains, but was released late on Wednesday after undergoing treatment and returned home to rest, a medic close to Fayyad said.

Fayyad, a smoker who had a heart attack during a private visit to the United States in May 2011, was "suffering from pancreatic inflammation," a doctor at the hospital in the West Bank city told Agence France Presse.

A former senior official at the International Monetary Fund, Fayyad is an economist who won respect for cleaning up the finances of the Palestinian Authority and improving security in the West Bank.

He has headed the Palestinian government since June 2007, after the Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip.

Rumors have been rife over the past few days that Fayyad is to be removed from the post following a dispute with the nationalist Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

Faced with chronic budget problems, the Palestinian Authority is currently going through one of its worst financial crises since its formation in 1994.