Hamas authorities on Thursday denied reports that al-Qaida-style groups were operating in the Gaza Strip to shake Hamas' rule.

"There is no group representing the international definition of Jihad," Hamas' Interior Minister Fatthi Hammad told Xinhua. "There were small groups that have been suppressed," he added.

"The situation on the ground is still good and we still maintain order," Hammad said.

In the past few weeks, tens of blasts took place across the Gaza Strip, mostly targeting vehicles or premises run by Hamas which seized full control of Gaza in 2007 after it defeated the secular Fatah movement of President Mahmoud Abbas.

Three of the bombings took place in the vicinity of the deposed Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haneya's house last week.

Meanwhile, Ihab al-Ghussein, the Interior Ministry's spokesman, said that those small groups "are trying to fuel disorder and commit security breaches."

Stressing to arrest "anybody violating the law," al-Ghussein accused Israel and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which is based in the West Bank, of "indirectly supporting these groups and their young men who wrongly understood the meaning of Islam."

In August, Hamas forces killed a leader of a radical Muslim group who declared an Islamic emirate in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah in defiance of its rule. As many as 25 followers of Sheikh Abdul Latif Mussa were killed hours after he declared his emirate.