GAZA CITY: A Gaza-based human rights group on Sunday expressed “deep concern” at Israeli troops’ use of excessive force in Friday’s fatal shooting of a young Palestinian.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said in a statement that soldiers shot dead Odah Jihad Hamad, 27, and wounded his brother Raddad, 22, as they picked through scrap in wasteland next to the Gaza-Israel frontier at Beit Hanun in the north of the coastal strip.

“Israeli forces used excessive force and directly opened fire at them, although it was clear that the two civilians were collecting steel and plastic from the landfill near the border fence,” the PCHR said.

The Israeli military said it opened fire at Palestinians near the border in response to Palestinian violence, including the firing of a mortar round that hit southern Israel and throwing rocks at soldiers.

The PCHR said troops had also used unnecessary force at a separate border incident on Friday, when they wounded three Palestinians near Jabaliya about five km from Beit Hanun in response to stone-throwing at soldiers.

“PCHR is deeply concerned over these crimes, which further prove the use of excessive force by Israeli forces in disregard for the civilians’ lives,” it said. “These grave breaches constitute war crimes.”

Before Friday, the last deadly incident in Gaza was on Nov. 1, when four Hamas militants were killed and five Israeli soldiers wounded during an army operation to destroy a Gaza-Israel tunnel.

Meanwhile, a bomb that Israeli authorities suspect was planted by Palestinian militants exploded in a bus near Tel Aviv on Sunday after passengers were evacuated, and police said no one was hurt.

“There were about 12 passengers on the bus. The driver stopped immediately when he was alerted to a suspicious object. It was a bag on the back bench, and he immediately ordered everyone off,” Eitan Fixman, a spokesman for the Dan bus company, was quoted as saying on the YNet news site.

Photographs from the scene, in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam, showed the blast blew out the vehicle’s windows.

“It seems that the bomb that exploded on a public bus near Tel Aviv was indeed a terrorist attack,” Ofir Gendelman, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Twitter.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, the first such incident since Israeli-Palestinian peace talks — which have shown few signs of progress — resumed in July.

Police said one of its bomb experts was at the scene when the bag blew up, but that no one was injured. Israeli media reports said one person was slightly hurt.