According to media reports citing police, the official is safe and attending a scheduled event after the incident.
The Palestinian presidency has blamed Hamas for an explosion, which it says targeted the prime minister’s convoy, which entered the Gaza Strip earlier in the day.
Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah hasn’t been hurt in the incident and is attending a scheduled event, Reuters reported.
The official has been accompanied during his rare visit to Gaza by PA intelligence chief Majed Faraj to participate in the inauguration of a wastewater treatment plant.
Several bystanders have reportedly been injured in the blast; their condition remains unknown.
This has been his second visit to the Gaza Strip since the signing of an Egyptian-brokered “reconciliation” deal between the West Bank’s governing Fatah faction, headed by Abbas, and Hamas in 2017. According to the deal, Hamas agreed to hand over administrative control of the Gaza Strip and start talks with Fatah in order to hold a general election in Palestine. In late November, the two sides agreed to hold parliamentary and presidential elections in Palestine before the end of 2018.
However, in February 2018, Nabil Shaath, the foreign affairs adviser of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told Sputnik that the intra-Palestinian reconciliation process has been put on hold as the Hamas movement had not yet relinquished administrative control over the Gaza Strip.
Hamas, which is listed as a terrorist organization in a number of countries, including in the United States and Israel, gained control of the Gaza Strip after a short war with Fatah in 2007. Since then, the region has been suffering from insurgency which resulted in a deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza. Fatah has repeatedly criticized Hamas for dividing the country and preventing the Palestinian Unity Government from ruling the Gaza Strip.
