GAZA CITY, Gaza (AFP)--A Palestinian militant was killed and another wounded in an explosion on Saturday as a group prepared to fire a rocket, medics and witnesses said.
The witnesses said that the blast in northern Gaza was the result of an Israeli air strike but the Israeli army denied that they had undertaken any attack in the area.
"We haven't carried out a strike in northern Gaza in recent hours. The explosion might be due to mishandling of weapons," an army spokesman said.
A doctor at Beit Lahiya hospital said that the wounded militant was in a critical condition.
A small armed group unconnected to the Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza said the dead man was one its fighters.
The Popular Resistance Committees, a loose grouping of hardline defectors from other factions, insisted that an unmanned Israeli aircraft had carried out the attack.
"Abdullah Hassan Manayia, 35, one of the commanders of a surveillance unit and a member of our faction, was martyred during a raid by an Israeli drone east of Jabaliya," the group said in a statement.
The army said that the militants didn't succeed in launching any rockets against Israel.
Earlier one rocket was fired at Israel from Gaza before dawn but the army was unable to say on which side of the border it hit as it was far from inhabited areas.
It was the first time in four days that no rockets or mortar rounds had been fired into populated areas of Israel.
A series of salvoes over the previous three days had left one Israeli woman wounded and prompted a series of tit-for-tat attacks that threatened to unravel a nearly five-month-old truce between Israel and Hamas.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 15, 2008 07:58 ET (12:58 GMT)

Publié le 15 novembre 2008 Copyright © 2008 Dowjones