Blasts at Hamas activist’s home kill three

GAZA: A series of explosions tore through the home of a Palestinian Hamas militant in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing at least three people and wounding three, hospital officials and witnesses said.

The cause of the blasts, which rocked a densely populated residential neighbourhood of Palestinian-ruled Gaza City, was not immediately known.

The two-storey home belongs to Salah Nassar, a Hamas member whose brother, Wael Nassar, is a senior official in the military wing of the Islamic militant group, local residents said.

Salah Nassar survived the explosions but was burned along with his father. His brother was not in the house at the time.

“We heard two big explosions inside the building on the first floor followed by a series of explosions,” one witness told Reuters.

Police said they were investigating the cause of the blasts, which engulfed the house in flames. Hamas members accosted news cameramen filming at the scene. A Reuters cameraman was struck and his camera was seized and broken.

Killed in shootout: An Israeli army officer killed a Palestinian gunman in a roadside gunbattle close to the Jewish settlement of Beit El in the West Bank, the army said.

The officer was in an unmarked car near the settlement, north of Ramallah, when a Palestinian gunmen posing as an olive picker opened fired with his Kalashnikov rifle.

A bullet tore through the windshield, hitting the officer’s driver in the hand. The driver slammed on the breaks and the officer returned fire, killing the gunman. —Reuters/AFP

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