JERUSALEM, GAZA CITY & NABLUS, West Bank - A senior military leader of the radical Islamic group Hamas was killed Monday when his car exploded in a blast blamed by the Palestinians on Israel, Palestinian sources said.
Hamed Sadr, 35, whose nephew killed himself and three Israeli soldiers in a suicide bomb attack on the Jewish settlement of Ariel last week, was killed with another unidentified man in a blast in the Wadi al-Tufa area of west Nablus, Palestinian officials said.
Two people in the street were also injured in the explosion, medics said.
Witnesses at the scene said a pilotless observation plane was overflying the area when the explosion happened.
A Palestinian security official accused Israel of "boobytrapping the car and blowing it up by remote control."
The car had Israeli license plates with a Jerusalem number and was blown to pieces.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat, speaking from Ramallah, said the explosion was "a war crime reflecting Israel's desire to carry on its assassinations which are aimed at destroying the Palestinian people.
"The Israeli government bears responsibility for the consequences of this action," he warned.
Three Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli forces on the border between the Gaza Strip and southern Israel overnight, an Israeli army spokesman said Monday.
The three men entered a restricted zone near the security fence between Gaza City and the Israeli kibbutz, or collective village, of Nahal Oz and Israeli forces opened fire, the spokesman said.
The bodies were found later when the army sent out a patrol to investigate, although no weapons were discovered with them. The search was still under way, the army said.
The spokesman said Palestinian militants had planted nine explosive devices aimed at Israeli military patrols in the area over the past week.
None of the men were identified by the army, which handed their bodies over to Palestinian medical authorities.
In a separate incident, another Palestinian man was shot dead in the south of the Gaza Strip overnight as he approached the fence and tried to cross it.
A Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli forces on Monday in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, hospital director Ali Mussa reported.
Ahmed Abdelkadr Othman, 24, was shot in the head in Rafah and died shortly afterwards, Mussa said.
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