GAZA, Feb 16: A senior commander of Islamic Jihad was among eight people killed in a massive explosion that obliterated his house late on Friday.

The Israeli armed forces insisted they had no role in the blast, which killed, besides Ayman Fayed, four of his fellow fighters, his wife and a son and daughter aged 6 and 5.

Some 40 people were wounded as shockwaves and debris ravaged neighbouring buildings in the al-Bureij refugee camp.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said five rockets were fired in Gaza early on Saturday. The Popular Resistance Committees, a militant group allied to Islamic Jihad and to Hamas, which controls Gaza, said it had fired 10 rockets in response to the death on Friday of Ayman Fayed, better known as Abu Abdallah.

“Blood begets blood!” mourners chanted at the commander’s funeral as gunmen fired bursts in the air from Kalashnikov rifles.

Islamic Jihad’s armed wing vowed to strike inside Israel: “This blood will not be wasted. The response will be deep inside the Zionist entity,” the group said in a statement.

Israel says it frequently thwarts attempts to mount suicide attacks. A Hamas bomber who killed a woman in southern Israel on Feb 4 was the first to cause casualties in a year.

Though the secular Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is deeply hostile to the Islamists who seized control of Gaza last year, a Fatah spokesman in the West Bank joined their accusations against Israel for the explosion.

Saeed Seyam, who acts as interior minister overseeing Hamas security forces in Gaza, made clear he did not believe that: “The occupier and his tools and collaborators will never achieve their goals against the resistance,” he said.

Islamic Jihad and some local residents said an Israeli air strike caused the blast. Others who live nearby said they heard no aircraft noise or other indication beforehand.

Some said they saw debris among the rubble of what looked like the locally manufactured rockets militants fire at Israel.

Israel has used air strikes on cars in Gaza to kill a num-ber of militants lately but has not bombed a house there since 2006.

Militants have also been killed in accidental explosions and faction fighting, while some Palestinians also accuse Israel of using undercover methods to set off explosions in the enclave.

A rocket that hit the Israeli town of Sderot a week ago wounded an 8-year-old boy, increasing popular pressure on the Israeli government to respond to such daily attacks. Ministers have said they may step up attacks on senior leaders in Gaza.

A senior Islamic Jihad official linked Fayed’s death to the bomb that killed a top Lebanese Hezbollah commander in Damascus last week for which Israel also denied responsibility: “It seems that Israel has decided to escalate its aggression against the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon,” Khaled al-Batsh said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is pursuing a new, US-sponsored peace process with Abbas. Both Israel and Abbas have refused to talk to Gaza’s Hamas leaders, and Israel has all but sealed the enclave’s 1.5 million people inside its borders.—Reuters