Israel blames Hamas for Gaza blast

Ehud Barak, Israeli defence minister, has blamed Hamas for a blast along the border with the Gaza Strip which wounded an Israeli soldier. Barak said on Friday that Tel Aviv was currently considering how and when to respond. “Israel views with great seriousness the detonation of an explosive tunnel along the border with the Gaza Strip, south of Kissufim” a statement released by Barak’s office read. A nearby soldier suffered minor injuries, probably from shrapnel, an Israeli military spokesman said. The blast, on a section of the border near the southern city of Khan Yunis, was claimed by the Hamas movement and came hours after a Palestinian teenager was shot dead by Israeli troops in the same area, Palestinian medical officials and witnesses said. The Popular Resistance Committees said its fighters had confronted an Israeli force of four tanks and a bulldozer involved in a short-range incursion beyond Israel’s border fence with the Gaza Strip. “Terrorists opened fire at IDF soldiers while they were performing routine activity adjacent to the security fence,” an Israeli military spokeswoman said in Jerusalem. An Israeli military official said the soldiers responded by firing at “suspicious locations”. Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for Gaza’s health ministry, said the boy had been killed near the border. “Thirteen-year-old Hmeid Yunes Abu Daqqa was killed by bullets fired from an Israeli helicopter during an incursion in Abasan and Al-Qarara,” he said, referring to two neighbourhoods east of Khan Yunis.