GAZA CITY, Oct 31: The Palestinian uprising claimed four more lives on Thursday as the Hamas accidently blew up a bomb workshop in the Gaza Strip and Israeli soldiers and Palestinians traded fire in the West Bank.

Three people died and six were wounded in Gaza City at the home of a Hamas activist, but the radical group said it was a “technical accident”, short-hand for a botched explosion by its own men.

In the West Bank, a Palestinian from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, died in a roadside shootout with an army officer, while army raids left at least seven civilians wounded.

The powerful explosion in Gaza City ripped a Hamas bomb workshop, killing three of its activists, but the group’s senior leaders ruled out the possibility Israel was behind the blast.

“This was a technical accident; our brothers died while they were working ... it didn’t come from outside,” said top Hamas political figure Abdel Aziz Rantissi, adding that Hamas was still investigating.

Medical and security sources named the three dead men as Samir Abbas, Ahmed Addahshan and Mohammed Dahdouh.

They belonged to the Hamas military wing, Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, along with two other people who were seriously wounded. One of them was Salah Nassar, brother of a top Hamas militant, Wael Nassar.

The remaining four were not activists.

The explosion gutted the home of Salah Nassar and damaged nearby buildings in the Zeitun neighbourhood of Gaza City, the security sources said.

An Israeli army official killed a Brigades man in a roadside gunbattle close to the Jewish settlement of Beit El in the West Bank, the army said.

The official was in an unmarked car near the settlement, north of Ramallah, when the militant posing as an olive-picker opened fired with his Kalashnikov rifle.

A bullet tore through the windshield, hitting the driver in the hand. —AFP