Gaza/Tel Aviv  - A truck loaded with explosives blew up Thursday morning at the northern Gaza Strip's border crossing of Erez with Israel, killing the Palestinian driver, an Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed.

She said the explosion occurred at the entrance to the crossing, on the Palestinian side. No one aside the suicide bomber was killed, she said, but the explosion caused damage.

She could not immediately give more details, but Israeli media reported that Israeli soldiers opened fire at the truck as it approached the crossing, forcing it to stop at a distance of only some 50 metres and to blow up prematurely.

The Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant off-shoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, claimed joint responsibility.

They carried out the "martyrdom operation" in response to the "daily crimes" committed by Israel against the Palestinians and to reiterate that the Palestinian resistance against the occupation would continue.

The attack comes as Egyptian-led talks on a possible truce in Gaza ended inconclusively. A delegation of the radical Islamic Hamas movement ruling Gaza returned late Wednesday from three days of talks in Cairo, where they heard Israel's response to the truce proposal from Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman.

Osama Hamdan, a member of the Hamas delegation, told Hamas' Al-Aqsa Television in Gaza, that the talks deadlocked, because Israel rejected Hamas' demand to lift its tight blockade of the Gaza Strip as part of the truce.

Israel wanted the deal to encompass only "calm for calm" - an end to attacks in return for an end to attacks, he said.

Meanwhile, a 62-year-old Palestinian farmer was also killed in the the central Gaza Strip, east of the al-Bureij camp near the border with Israel. Palestinians said he was killed when an Israeli tank shelled the area. The Israeli military said it knew of no Israeli operation in the area, but said it was checking the report.

Militants in Gaza have recently stepped up their attacks on the Strip's border crossings with Israel. They have said they want to "break" the Israeli blockade, but Israel has charged that attacks on the crossings only make it more difficult to keep them open.

It shut down both the Erez crossing in the north and the Suffa crossing in the south immediately after Thursday morning's suicide bombing. The Suffa crossing would however reopen later in the day to allow through humanitarian aid, it said.

Late last month, Hamas' armed carried out a synchronized, double attack on the Kerem Shalom and Kissufim crossings, using three booby-trapped cars, and injuring 16 Israeli soldiers. (dpa)