50 hurt in blast at Gaza terror training camp

Five in serious condition; hospital declares ‘state of emergency’

Palestinian youth show their skills during a graduation ceremony as part of a training camp run by the Hamas movement on January 29, 2015 in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip. (AFP photo/Said Khatib)
Palestinian youth show their skills during a graduation ceremony as part of a training camp run by the Hamas movement on January 29, 2015 in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip. (AFP photo/Said Khatib)

At least 50 Palestinians were wounded in a blast that occurred Thursday inside a terror training camp in Gaza, Hamas officials, medics and witnesses said.

“An explosion happened inside a post of the resistance in Beit Lahiya,” said interior ministry spokesman Iyad al-Bozum, in reference to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.

The Health Ministry spokesman in Gaza, Ashraf al-Qudra, said the blast wounded 50 people, five of them in a serious condition, and including children.

Witnesses said the blast took place inside a training camp of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades in the northern Gaza Strip, where Hamas is the de facto power.

A doctor in the coastal enclave, Baker Abu Safia of Al-Awda Hospital, said 30 wounded people were brought to his establishment, most of them women and children.

He said the hospital “declared a state of emergency” after the explosion took place.

Islamist terror group Hamas, which rules Gaza, is committed to the destruction of Israel.

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