JERUSALEM – A fiery explosion in the middle of a busy street killed the top military commander of Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip yesterday. The Palestinian Arab terror group immediately blamed Israel, which denied involvement.

Adding to tensions, gunmen in the West Bank killed a Jewish settler and seriously wounded a second Israeli man. Roadside attacks of this type were common at the height of the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, but had become less common over the past year.

The explosion in Gaza came as Islamic Jihad commander Khaled Dahdouh was driving through the center of Gaza City. The blast sent shrapnel and body parts flying on a crowded thoroughfare in the Rimal neighborhood.

The blast injured two people who apparently were bystanders, according to Palestinian Arab medical officials. It also shattered windows in nearby apartments, damaged parked cars and briefly knocked out power to the area.

“I ran outside to see what had happened, and I saw the burning car and pieces of a body,” an electrician, Yousef Habush, said.

When Israeli forces carry out a “targeted killing” of a terror leader, the military generally acknowledges having done so. But an army spokeswoman emphatically denied responsibility for this death, though Israel had tried to kill Dahdouh in the past.

“We had nothing at all to do with the explosion,” Major Avital Leibovich said.

Islamic Jihad nonetheless vowed vengeance against Israel. “We will attack in full force to avenge this crime,” a spokesman for the group who goes by the nom de guerre of Abu Hafs said.

Islamic Jihad said Dahdouh was responsible for many attacks against Israelis, and had commanded the group’s military wing in Gaza as well as overseeing its manufacture of armaments, including homemade rockets. But Islamic Jihad dismissed the possibility that Dahdouh might have been transporting explosives that went off accidentally.

Unlike the larger and more powerful terror group Hamas, Islamic Jihad over the past year has pressed ahead with a campaign of suicide bombings and other attacks in Israel. The Israelis have repeatedly targeted its members in response.

With Israel’s own parliamentary elections less than a month away, Israeli leaders and candidates for office have been vying with one another in pledging tough action against Palestinian Arab terrorists who carry out attacks of any kind against Israelis.

In the first of the two shooting attacks in the West Bank yesterday, gunmen killed Eldar Abir, 48, from the settlement of Migdalim, about eight miles southeast of the Palestinian city of Nablus. He was ambushed as he filled up his car at a gas station at the settlement’s entrance.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a militia with links to the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, claimed responsibility for the killing. But Israeli police said they were still investigating.