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Israel and Hamas agree short ceasefire Israel and Hamas agree short ceasefire on humanitarian grounds
(about 3 hours later)
Israel and Hamas agreed to a UN request to halt hostilities Israel and Hamas have agreed to a five-hour "humanitarian pause” in their nine-day battle. The suspension of hostilities, brokered by the UN and starting at 10am on Thursday, comes after four Palestinian children died in an Israeli strike on a Gaza beach and follows an earlier Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that was observed only by Israel.
for five hours on humanitarian grounds on Thursday while efforts The brief truce has been called to allow restocking with food, water and other essentials by the many Palestinians who have been trapped in their houses for days. The death toll in Israel's assault on Gaza has passed 216, including the four boys killed while playing on a beach on Wednesday.
continue to broker a longer-term truce. One Israeli civilian has been killed by mortar fire close to the Gaza border.
The sides announced the temporary lull in fighting across the Ahead of the ceasefire the intermittent sound of explosions continued to echo across the coastal enclave early on Thursday. Israel said it would hold its fire as agreed from 10am but vowed to retaliate "firmly and decisively" if Hamas or other militant groups continued their attacks.
Gaza border after an Israeli strike killed four children on a beach in Later the Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that following consultations between various factions the Gaza militants had decided to respect the pause as well and refrain from firing rockets.
the coastal strip on Wednesday. Robert Serry, the UN special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process, had asked Israel to agree to a "unilateral humanitarian pause" so that supplies could be delivered to Gaza, said UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq. Serry would "urge the parties in Gaza to respect that pause", Haq said.
An Israeli offensive aimed at halting rocket fire into Israel halted its bombardment for six hours on Tuesday after Egypt put forward a ceasefire proposal that unravelled. Abu Zuhri said on Wednesday that his group had formally rejected the plan, bemoaning what he called little support from the Arab world.
Israel by Gaza militants had resumed after previous Egyptian-brokered The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, met on Wednesday in Cairo with a senior official from Hamas to try to salvage the Egyptian proposal.
truce efforts collapsed on Tuesday when Hamas continued to fire rockets. In Washington Barack Obama said the US supported Egypt's continued efforts to restore the 2012 ceasefire and would use all of its diplomatic resources and relationships to secure a deal to end the violence.
Israel's campaign, which entered its tenth day on Thursday, has Israel's military said its forces bombed at least 150 targets in Gaza on Wednesday. It did not provide more specifics but the Gaza interior ministry website said 30 houses were targeted including those of senior Hamas leaders Mahmoud Zahar, Jamila Shanti, Fathi Hamas and Ismail Ashkar.
killed more than 200 Palestinians, with a Gaza-based human rights group Zahar was a key figure in Hamas's violent takeover of Gaza in 2007, while the other three were members of the Palestinian parliament elected in 2006. Many Hamas leaders have gone into hiding since Israel began its bombardment on 8 July in response to rocket attacks.
saying more than 80% have been civilians. The four boys killed on Wednesday were cousins aged nine to 11. They were hit when the Israeli military fired on a beach beside a coastal road west of Gaza City. Seven others adults and children were wounded in the strike, which the Palestinian human rights activist Khalil Abu Shamalla and Palestinian health officials said came from an Israeli naval vessel. Hussam Abadallah, a waiter at the beachside al-Deera hotel, said the strike happened at about 4pm.
Early on Thursday a 70-year-old woman died of injuries sustained A witness who identified himself only as Abu Ahmed said the boys had been scavenging for scrap metal when the first shell hit a nearby shipping container used in the past by Hamas security forces. He said the boys fled but a second projectile "hit all of them".
during a previous air strike in Khan Younis, Gaza medical services said. Abadallah said he saw "white smoke coming from a small room, like a shack" belonging to one of the fishermen not far from the fishing port. Then he saw the boys running.
Since 8 July militants have fired more than 1,200 rockets at Israel. They claimed their first Israeli life on Tuesday. The army said early on Thursday that 82 rockets had hit Israel "We started shouting at them: 'Run, run here.' Then a shell from the sea landed behind them," Abadallah said. Some journalists dining at the hotel jumped from the terrace and helped five children bleeding from shrapnel get to safety in the hotel. "I will never forget these horrible images," he said.
during the course of Wednesday and more than 30 were intercepted by Despite the temporary truce and efforts to negotiate a more permanent ceasefire, Israeli officials quoted anonymously by the New York Times said the likelihood of a long-threatened ground invasion remained “very high.”
Israel's missile defences. “Every day that passes makes the possibility more evident,” an official said.
Hamas had rejected initial Egyptian efforts for a full ceasefire, saying it had not been included in the discussions.
The Israeli army announced it would halt its bombardment of Gaza
between 10am and 3pm local time following a UN
request for a humanitarian truce. Hamas later followed suit.
"The Palestinian factions agreed to accept the offer from the
United Nations for a cooling-down on the ground for five hours starting
from 10 in the morning," spokesman Sami Abu Zukhri told Agence France-Presse.
In the small hours of Thursday Israeli air strikes continued
to shake Gaza and rockets kept flying into Israel, each side said.
In Cairo a Hamas official met Egyptian leaders and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, arrived to join the diplomatic
efforts.
Barack Obama on Wednesday backed Egypt's efforts to
broker a ceasefire and offered Washington's full diplomatic support. "Over the next 24 hours we'll continue to stay in close contact
with our friends and parties in the region, and we will use all of our
diplomatic resources and relationships to support efforts of closing a
deal on a ceasefire," said the US president.
Obama said that while he and the world were "heartbroken" by the
deaths of civilians in the Gaza Strip, US ally Israel had the "right to
defend itself from rocket attacks that terrorise" its population.
In addition to the four children who died on the Gaza seashore,
several people were also wounded in an apparent Israeli naval
bombardment, medics said.
The first strike scattered terrified children and adults on the
beach. A second and third struck as they ran, setting fire to huts on
the beach.
The strikes appeared to be the result of shelling by the Israeli navy against an area with small shacks used by fishermen.
Several children ran inside a hotel where at least three had shrapnel injuries.
Several hours after the strikes the Israeli military described
the deaths as "tragic" and said it was investigating. "Based on preliminary results the target of this strike was Hamas terrorist operatives," the military said in a statement.
"The reported civilian casualties from this strike are a tragic outcome."
The Israeli military dropped flyers and sent text messages on Wednesday warning 100,000 people in north-eastern Gaza to evacuate their
homes ahead of an air campaign targeting "terror sites and operatives"
in Zeitun and Shejaiya, two flashpoint districts east of Gaza City. An identical message was sent to Beit Lahiya in the north. Hamas dismissed the warning as a scare tactic, telling residents there was "no need to worry."
Azzam al-Ahmad, a senior member of Abbas's Fatah movement, said a
Hamas official was in Cairo to hold talks with Egyptian officials.
Ahmad expressed hope that the talks in Cairo would "crystallise a
definite formula for an Egyptian initiative" or clarify its initial
plan, which had proposed an end to hostilities from Tuesday.
Abbas himself later arrived in Cairo to join the diplomatic
efforts and was slated to travel to Ankara on Thursday in search of
regional support for an immediate end to the fighting.
Also in Cairo, the Middle East envoy Tony Blair met the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and the foreign minister, Sameh
Shoukri.
Egypt's initiative was designed "to allow all the issues that are
at the heart of this problem … to be dealt with in a thorough and
proper way", Blair said.