GAZA, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- Israeli air force killed a Palestinian militant in northern Gaza Strip late on Wednesday, putting a fragile ceasefire in peril, medical and witnesses said.

    The incident took place half an hour before midnight when an Israeli drone dropped a bomb on an Islamic Jihad militant who was walking in the east of Jabaliya refugee camp, killing him and wounding three others, the witnesses said.

    Medical sources identified the slain as Ghassan al-Taramssi, 23.The other three casualties suffered from moderate injuries.

    The Islamic Jihad group said al-Taramssi was one of its fighters.

    The latest incident brings to seven the number of Palestinians who were killed in a sudden surge of violence during the past 24 hours. They mark the most serious violation of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that Israel and the Palestinian militant groups accepted in June.

    Starting in late Tuesday, Israel killed six Hamas militants in a series of air strikes and ground incursion in central and southern Gaza Strip.

    Hamas has been committed to the ceasefire which aims at easing the Israeli blockade on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in exchange for calmness. But the Islamic movement fired tens of rockets into southern Israel in the wake of the attacks that killed Hamas fighters.

    Hamas restrained on Wednesday afternoon and halted the rocket-fire but the latest airstrike in Jabaliya paves the way for another round of violence, this time by the less influential Islamic Jihad.