Three Palestinian fishermen who died in an offshore blast on Sunday were killed by an explosive-laden Israeli drone that had fallen into the sea and blew up in their nets, the Hamas-run interior ministry in Gaza said on Thursday.
The men – two brothers and a cousin – were working off the coast of the southern town of Khan Younis when the explosion happened.
At the time of the blast, the Israeli military denied any involvement in the incident.
The explosion came at a time when Palestinian militants were test-firing rockets into the sea, and a Gaza-based human rights group, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, said on Sunday the fishing boat may have been hit by accident.
But Eyad Al Bozom, the Gaza interior ministry spokesman, said no Palestinian rocket had hit the fishing boat, and that parts of an Israeli quadcopter drone that carried explosives were discovered in its nets. The drone blew up as the fishermen were lifting their nets, killing all three, he said.
Half an hour before the explosion, the fisherman found another drone caught in their nets but were able to recover it safely and hand it over to maritime police, he said.
The interior ministry said the two explosive-laden drones matched.
Mr Al Bozom said the drones had probably been in the water since an Israeli attack on a Palestinian naval craft on February 22 off Gaza.
The Israeli military said at the time its forces noticed suspicious naval activity off Gaza's shore and thwarted a "potential threat to Israeli naval vessels", without elaborating on the weapons used.
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The Israeli military rarely comments publicly on the use of explosives-carrying drones.
The investigation by the interior ministry ruled out a local missile being misfired, saying "the site of the explosion of the three fishermen's boat was completely outside the range of the missile firing range".
Hamas, an Islamist militant group, took control of Gaza in 2007, and the seaside strip, home to two million Palestinians, has since been under a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt, which cite security concerns for the measure.
