Three Palestinian fishermen who died in an offshore explosion found an Israeli drone loaded with explosives that fell into the sea and exploded in their nets, the Hamas-led interior ministry in Gaza said on Thursday.
An Israeli military spokeswoman did not immediately comment. At the time of the explosion on Sunday, the Israeli military denied any involvement in the incident.
The incident occurred at a time when Palestinian militants were testing rockets against the sea, and a Gaza-based human rights group, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, said on Sunday that the fishing boat may have been hit by accident.
But Eyad al-Bozom, a spokesman for the Gaza Interior Ministry, said that no Palestinian rocket had hit the fishing boat and that parts of an Israeli quadcopter drone carrying explosives were discovered in its nets. The drone exploded as fishermen lifted their nets, killing the three.
Bozom said the drone was probably in the water since an Israeli attack on a Palestinian navy vessel on February 22 off Gaza.
The Israeli military said at the time that its forces noticed suspicious naval activity off the coast of Gaza and thwarted a “potential threat to Israeli navy ships”, without going into details about the weapons used.
The Israeli military rarely makes public comments about the use of drones that carry explosives.
Hamas, an Islamic militant group, took control of Gaza in 2007, and the coastline, where 2 million Palestinians live, is under a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt, who allege security concerns for the measure.