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Gaza: A powerful blast flattened the two-story house of a militant commander in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing three people.
A baby girl and a boy were killed, 40 others were injured and an unknown number of others were buried under the rubble, Gaza's Hamas rulers and a Palestinian health official said.
Israel, which routinely accepts responsibility for attacks on military targets, denied involvement. But Hamas said the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike and responded with a heavy barrage of rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel, wounding an Israeli woman.
Ambulances rushed to the scene and residents of nearby homes brought over shovels and bulldozers to help dig people out of the rubble. Three people covered in blood were carried out on stretchers and hurried into ambulances that sped them away to the local hospital.
It was not clear whether the Hamas commander, Ahmed Hamouda, was inside the house at the time of the explosion.
Gaza Health Ministry said an infant girl, a boy and an unidentified man were killed.
An Israeli army spokeswoman, said the military was not operating in the area at the time. "We deny any connection to this incident," she said.
But Hamas insisted that Israel was to blame. "This heinous massacre reflects the ugly face of the Zionist Nazi occupation," said Abdel Latif Qanou, a Hamas spokesman.
Shortly after the explosion, Hamas said it fired a barrage of mortar shells and rockets toward southern Israel. Israel's national rescue service said a 59-year-old woman was moderately wounded when a rocket struck a home on an Israeli communal farm.
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