An explosion destroyed the house of a militant leader late Thursday in Gaza City, apparently an accident with explosives, Palestinian security officials said.

Two people were rescued alive from the rubble. The security officials said the blast was caused by explosives inside the house.

The house belonged to Talal Abu Safiyah, commander of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine forces in the area. The PFLP is a small, radical Palestinian group. The PFLP said the house was hit by a missile fired from an Israeli F-16 warplane, but other Palestinians said they did not hear a warplane overhead, and the Israeli military said there was no airstrike.

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Earlier on Thursday, three people were lightly injured as a Qassam rocket hit central Sderot. Four additional people were treated for shock.

The rocket hit in the western Negev town's industrial area, near the municipal building, and caused significant damage.

Another rocket hit north of the Gaza Strip late Thursday, causing no injuries or damage.

Six Qassam rockets struck southern Israel from Gaza earlier Thursday, a day after 18 Palestinians were killed in botched IDF shelling of rocket launch sites in Beit Hanun.

Four rockets were fired Thursday morning, two of which hit the area of a kibbutz; one caused light damage to a cow shed and the other landed at the entrance to a community and caused no damage. A third rocket fell in the town of Sderot, damaging a car. There were no injuries in any of the rocket strikes.

Thursday afternoon two additional rockets hit open areas in the western Negev, causing no injuries or damage, Army Radio reported.

Senior Hamas members called on Wednesday on the organization's military wing to resume suicide terror attacks in Israel in the wake of the shelling.

Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas' political bureau, said, at a press conference in Damascus, that the temporary halt to such attacks in Israel had come to an end.

Hamas' military wing was free to act and choose its response in keeping with the developments in the field, Meshal said.

"All Palestinian groups are urged to activate resistance despite the difficult situation on the ground. Our confidence in our military wing to respond is great," Meshal said.

Islamic Jihad, which never accepted the cease-fire brokered by Abbas and Egypt, vowed to carry out suicide bombings in response to the Beit Hanun strike.

Leaflets distributed Wednesday in Gaza, and attributed to Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades organization, also called for the resumption of terror attacks in Israel.

Meshal added that the United States also bore responsibility for the killings, in light of its support for Israel Hamas' military wing also decried Washington's "political and financial support" for Israel, and appeared to call on Muslims to attack U.S. targets, urging them "to teach the American enemy harsh lessons".

Speaking a few hours earlier at a press conference in Gaza, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas harshly slammed the IDF shelling.

He called, however, on the Palestinian factions to refrain from carrying out terror attacks and urged them to cease the Qassam rocket fire, so as not to give Israel an excuse to continue with its actions. Through its actions, Abbas said, Israel was repeatedly undermining the chances for peace.