Palestinian truck bomber attacks key border crossing

A Palestinian suicide truck bomber attacked a key border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel on Thursday causing damage but no casualties.

A spokesman for the Islamic Jihad group said they carried out the attack on the Erez crossing in cooperation with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's more secular Fatah faction.

An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed the truck bombing and added that there were no Israeli casualties. Israel's Channel 10 television said troops had prevented the truck from getting close to the crossing by firing at it before it exploded. Israel Radio reported that many windows had been broken and damage caused to the crossing.

Hamas said the bomb-laden truck was driven by a suicide bomber under cover of heavy early morning fog and that he was accompanied by gunmen who opened fire at the Israeli checkpoint before the explosion. Abu Ahmed, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad's armed wing said the truck was carrying four tonnes of explosives. He identified the suicide bomber as 23-year-old Ibrahim Nasser from Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip.

Palestinian residents who live close to the area of the explosion said that an Israeli helicopter later fired two missiles into the area and silenced gunfire which could be heard after the bomb was detonated. Israeli and Gaza Strip residents who live over 30 km (20 miles) from the crossing reported hearing the blast. Separately, but at the time of the bombing, Israeli troops raided a village in the central Gaza Strip and shot dead a 63-year-old man, medical workers and Hamas said.

The troops also rounded up the residents in a school before blowing up a residential building, they said. The Israeli military was checking the report. Israel frequently carries out raids and air strikes in the territory as part of what it describes as efforts to curb cross-border rocket fire. Egypt has been trying to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas to end Gaza border violence. Talks between Egyptian and Hamas officials on Wednesday ended inconclusively.