An explosion has ripped through a house in the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, killing one person and wounding two others, hospital officials say. The source of the explosions is, as yet, unknown.
The wounded included two relatives, including an eight-year-old child.
An Israeli army spokesman said there were no Israeli military operations in the area at the time. Palestinian ecurity sources confirmed that the explosion was an internal and not an Israeli air attack.
On Sunday, assailants killed five Palestinian bystanders in two separate shooting incidents in the Gaza Strip, as tensions between rival factions in the impoverished territory deteriorate even further.
In the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunus on Sunday, gunmen killed a pregnant Palestinian woman and another family member and wounded her husband and his brother, a Hamas member, hospital sources said.
Witnesses said armed attackers, whose identities were unclear, opened fire at a local Hamas leader, Muhammad al-Ghalban, as he was travelling in a car with family members after dark in the town.
Al-Ghalban and his brother, who was critically wounded, were being treated at a Gaza hospital, medics said.
Sami Abu Zuhri, spokesman for the Hamas movement, said the incident was a planned attack.
"The attack targeted our mujahid [fighter] Yasir al-Ghalban. Two passengers have been killed in the car," he said.
"Some groups, mostly belonging to security services and particularly the preventative security apparatus, stand behind these incidents," he said.
The motive for the shooting was unknown, but local Hamas sources blamed rival Fatah members, and took to the streets as tensions rose.
In a separate incident in Gaza City, three bystanders were killed in the crossfire as Hamas fighters returned fire at unknown assailants, local witnesses said.
The three bystanders, all male, were pronounced dead at a Gaza hospital, medics said.
The incident took place not far from the home of Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister.
The deaths are the first since a Palestinian security officer was killed and seven were wounded in clashes between rival Fatah and Hamas factions in Gaza last Thursday, underscoring growing tension in the coastal strip.
The clashes have disrupted a tenuous peace in place since Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and Fatah’s leader, and Haniya’s Hamas-led government began talks last month to try to end internal violence in Gaza.
*this article was sourced from aljazeera.net and local sources
