Explosions hit Gaza police checkpoints, two dead

Explosions hit two police checkpoints in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday. The first blast destroyed a motorcycle as it passed a police checkpoint with two riders aboard, witnesses said. Two policemen were killed and a third Palestinian wounded. The second explosion wounded several people at a police checkpoint elsewhere in the city, the interior ministry said.

The Hamas-run interior ministry said the incidents killed two officers and wounding several other Palestinians. A spokesman for the Israeli military said he knew of no involvement by it in the back-to-back incidents in Gaza city, which came at a time of simmering cross-border confrontations with Hamas, the Palestinian enclave's ruling Islamists. Hamas has at times faced internal opposition from more strict Islamist militants aligned with al Qaeda or Islamic State.