Gaza City, Gaza Strip — A large explosion went off near a car traveling in northern Gaza City on Wednesday, lightly wounding three bystanders, Palestinian hospital officials said.
Palestinian security officials said the cause of the blast was unknown. The occupants of the vehicle also were not immediately known.
Medical officials said the wounded included a 62-year-old woman, a 5-year-old boy and a 35-year-old man.
During four years of fighting, Israel has carried out numerous airstrikes aimed at Palestinian militants. But witnesses said there were no signs that Israel had attacked the vehicle.
The army declined to comment.
Meanwhile, Israel's Attorney-General and the Shin Bet security chief on Wednesday postponed a meeting to discuss a rise in violent threats by Jewish extremists opposed to a plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, a Justice Ministry official said.
Attorney-General Meni Mazuz and Shin Bet head Avi Dichter had been scheduled to meet Wednesday after a series of warnings this week about the growing threat of violence.
The meeting was then postponed for "technical reasons," said Justice Ministry spokesman Yaakov Galanti. No date has been set for the meeting, but it will be next week, he said.
Mr. Mazuz called the meeting because "he wants to hear, he wants to know, he wants to examine the things," Mr. Galanti said.
The meeting follows a warning by Police Minister Tsahi Hanegbi that political violence could accompany Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposed Gaza pullback.
"They (extremists) will assassinate the prime minister, a minister, an army official or a police official," Mr. Hanegbi told Israel TV's Channel Two on Tuesday. "They don't always succeed and they don't always have the means to carry out the acts. But we are not lacking extremists."
Earlier in the week, Mr. Dichter warned Mr. Sharon's cabinet that he was concerned about growing militancy among hard-line settlers.
Mr. Sharon has also said that he is concerned for his safety.
The threat of violence strikes a deep chord in Israel. Many politicians and security officials still blame themselves for ignoring the warning signs ahead of the 1995 assassination of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an ultranationalist Jew.
Carmi Gillon, who headed the Shin Bet when Rabin was assassinated, said Israeli officials need to deal "night and day" with the threats.
"The police minister is right. The next murder is at the door."
Mr. Sharon's plan calls for uprooting all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, as well as four isolated enclaves in the West Bank.
While most settler leaders have said they will only resist evacuation through non-violent means, some rabbis and settler representatives have warned that violence is possible.
"We are dealing with a number of complaints by a few people who said and wrote things that could be interpreted as incitement to violence but have not yet decided to press charges," Mr. Galanti said. He refused to elaborate.
On Tuesday, two Palestinian gunmen, two Palestinian civilians and an Israeli officer were killed in a refugee camp on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Nablus.
The incident began when soldiers cornered two local leaders of the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine, a violent PLO faction, and an Israeli officer and a Palestinian gunman were killed in the initial exchange of fire, said an army spokeswoman, Major Sharon Feingold.
The second fugitive fled into an apartment building and two tenants, American-educated computer science professor Khaled Sallah, 50, and his son Mohammed, 16, were killed in the fighting.
Maj. Feingold said the military regretted the deaths. "But any time the terrorists use civilians as cover these things happen," she said.
In the Gaza Strip, a 15-year-old Palestinian was killed in the Khan Younis refugee camp when Israeli tanks opened fire in the area, Palestinian officials said. The army also said its soldiers had shot and killed two Palestinians who attacked an army post. The Islamic Jihad militant group claimed responsibility for the attempted attack.
Later in Nablus, a militant with the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades was killed in an explosion, witnesses said. Israeli military officials said the army was not involved in the incident and apparently the gunman had been preparing a bomb to be used against Israel.
