A powerful blast rocked the French Cultural Centre in Gaza City on Friday evening, marking the second time the facility was hit by an explosion in the past two months.

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There were no reports of injuries, but the building was partly damaged, FRANCE 24’s Gallagher Fenwick reported, citing local and diplomatic sources.

“The outside facility has been damaged by an explosive device,” he said, adding that the attack was sending worrying signals to French authorities. Friday's blast was the second time in just two months that the centre had been struck by explosives.

“It is very symbolic,” Fenwick added, because it was “the last foreign consulate left in Gaza where Palestinians could get visas for abroad.”

Police spokesman Ayman Betjeni called it “a cowardly attack”.

"It seems as if there are elements who want to disturb Gaza's security and are targeting foreigners to intimidate them and give a bad image of Gaza," he added.

Betjeni said all streets leading from the scene had been closed off and that "investigators were on the scene trying to identify the perpetrators".

A source connected with the centre said that one or two explosions had damaged the south wall of the compound as well as some of the facade of the building, which also houses the local branch of the French consulate.

On October 8, when the facility was closed for the Muslim Eid al-Adha holidays, a fire broke out after two faulty fuel tanks exploded nearby. The centre had not yet reopened after that attack.

Police at the time suggested the explosion may have been a criminal act, but the results of their investigation were never released.

French diplomatic missions and official buildings have been on high alert since the start of a spate of kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners by Islamic State (IS) group jihadists and their allies, particularly that of Frenchman Hervé Gourdel in Algeria.

France has angered the IS group by taking part in air strikes on the group's forces in Iraq.

Friday's blasts came a day after a suicide bomber struck at a high school attached to the French cultural centre in Kabul, killing at least one person and wounding 15.

The Gaza Strip, subject to an Israeli blockade and battered by a July-August Israeli military offensive, suffers chronic power cuts, leading to the widespread use of privately owned generators and storage of jerrycans of diesel fuel to power them.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

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