Israeli soldier and Palestinian militant killed in Gaza

GAZA (Reuters) - A bomb planted by Palestinian militants killed an Israeli soldier on the Gaza frontier on Thursday and an Israeli air strike killed a gunman in the Hamas-controlled territory.

Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the soldier's death and said Israel launched the air strike that killed one of its members in the northern Gaza Strip after the group carried out a cross-border rocket attack.

Israeli forces withdrew from the northern Gaza Strip on Monday after a sweep against Palestinian rocket crews that killed more than 120 people -- half of them civilians, according to medical officials. Fighting has persisted sporadically since.

The Israeli military confirmed a soldier was killed and three were wounded when a bomb blew up their jeep at the Kissufim border crossing in the central Gaza Strip.

"A group of fighters planted a bomb under the cover of darkness and waited for the jeep to arrive ... (then) two fighters detonated the explosives," said Abu Ahmed, an Islamic Jihad spokesman.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Editing by Peter Millership)