By Hani Shair, Mumen Ghurab

GAZA CITY, Palestine

A Hamas-affiliated border security guard was killed on Thursday when a suicide bomber blew himself up near the Rafah crossing in the southern Gaza Strip, an official said.

Iyad al-Buzm, spokesman for the Gaza-based Interior Ministry, said in a statement that security forces stopped two people near the border early Thursday morning, before one of them blew himself up.

“A number of border security guards were injured. They were transferred to Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospital for treatment,” he said.

Later, it was announced that one of the injured, Nidal al-Jaafari, had succumbed to his wounds.

Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas group, said in a brief statement, that al-Jaafari was one of its commanders.

Security sources who spoke to Anadolu Agency on the condition of anonymity said the attacker belonged to an extremist group which was trying to infiltrate from the Gaza Strip to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, before being stopped by security forces.

They added that one of them surrendered to the security forces.

The Hamas group has tightened the security measures on the border between Egypt and Gaza, in accordance with understandings reached with the Egyptian authorities recently.

This is the worst confrontation between Hamas and extremist groups in Gaza since 2009, when Hamas took control of the Ibn Taymiyya mosque in Rafah leaving dozens killed and injured.