Palestinian truck bomber attacks key border crossing

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - An explosives-laden truck driven by a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up on Thursday near an Israeli border crossing with the Gaza Strip but only the attacker was killed in a blast heard 30 kilometres away.

Israeli media reports said soldiers fired at the vehicle as it approached Erez Crossing. An army spokeswoman said it had exploded on the Palestinian side of the frontier, blowing out windows in nearby buildings.

The spokeswoman said two other men involved in the attack were killed when two missiles launched from an Israeli helicopter totally destroyed their getaway vehicle. There were no Israeli casualties, she said.

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

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.

The Islamist Hamas group, which controls the Gaza Strip, said the vehicle 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 crossing before the explosion.

Israel has heavily restricted the movement of Palestinian people and goods through its border crossings with Gaza since Hamas seized the territory from Fatah in fighting last June.

In Egyptian-mediated talks on a truce between Israel and Palestinian militant groups, Hamas has demanded the crossings be re-opened in return for a cessation of violence that has threatened to undermine Abbas's peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.