BEIRUT (REUTERS) - A bomb blast wounded a member of the Palestinian group Hamas in the Lebanese city of Sidon on Sunday (Jan 14), destroying his car as he was about to enter it.

The target, Mohamed Hamdan, was not a publicly known Hamas figure in Lebanon. A statement from Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, confirmed he was a member of the group, without detailing his role, and said "initial indications" suggested Israel was behind the bombing.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

Al-Manar television, run by the Lebanese political and military group Hezbollah, described him as an important person in the group. It reported that he appeared to have a security role and was being tracked by Israel.

A leader of the Palestinian Fatah movement in Lebanon said Mr Hamdan was involved in operations in Israel.

"The incident has Israeli fingerprints," Mounir al-Maqdah, the Fatah official, told Reuters.

The blast took place around noon (1000 GMT), the Lebanese army said in a statement. Security forces sealed off the site of the explosion in a northern residential district of Sidon, 40km south of Beirut.

The blast destroyed Hamdan's silver BMW and sent a column of smoke into the sky, footage from the scene broadcast by Lebanese television stations showed. Fire fighters doused the vehicle.

Mr Hamdan was "slightly wounded" in the attack, a Hamas official in Sidon, Ayman Shanaa, told Palestinian television station Paltoday.

Witnesses said the man targeted in the attack appeared to have been wounded in the leg. He was transported to hospital, where he was being treated for his wounds.

Sidon is home to two of the 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.