GAZA CITY, Nov 4: The Israel-Palestinian conflict claimed eight more lives in just 24 hours, with seven Palestinians killed on Sunday and Monday, and another who died of wounds sustained over the weekend, officials said.

In the West Bank town of Nablus, a senior military leader of the Hamas and another man were killed when their car exploded in the west of the city. The blast, which also injured two bystanders, was blamed on Israel.

The Hamas leader was identified as Hamed Sadr, 35, whose nephew killed himself and three Israeli soldiers in a suicide bomb attack on the Jewish settlement of Ariel last week.

Witnesses said a drone was overflying the area at the time of the explosion, which blew the car, which had yellow Israeli license plates, to pieces.

A Palestinian security official accused Israel of “boobytrapping the car and blowing it up by remote control”.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat denounced the explosion as “a war crime reflecting Israel’s desire to carry on its assassinations which are aimed at destroying the Palestinian people”.

In the Gaza Strip, five Palestinians were killed.

Three were shot dead overnight by Israeli forces on the border between the Gaza Strip and southern Israel, an army spokesman said.

The three men entered a restricted zone near the border fence between the Gaza Strip 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, he said.

None of the men were identified by the army, which handed their bodies over to Palestinian medical authorities.

Another two men were killed in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, which lies on the border with Egypt.

One was shot dead on Sunday after Israeli troops saw him behaving suspiciously and entering the prohibited security zone around a roadblock manned by Israeli soldiers. The man’s identity was not released.

A second man was shot in the town later on Monday, in circumstances which were not clear, hospital sources said. Ahmed Abdelkadr Othman, 24, was shot in the head and died shortly afterwards.

Four other Palestinians, including a five-year-old boy and an 18-year-old girl, were injured Monday by Israeli fire in Rafah, medics said.

Another man from Khan Yunis, just north of Rafah, who was shot by Israeli troops on Saturday died of his wounds Monday. —AFP