|
 Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said the strike on
a house in Shati camp took place after the truce was scheduled to
start on Monday morning.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said she was checking the report.
Israel announced a seven-hour ceasefire to facilitate the entry of
humanitarian aid and allow some of the hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians displaced by an almost four-week-old war to go home.
The announcement met with suspicion from Gaza's dominant Hamas
Islamists and followed unusually strong censure from Washington at
the apparent Israeli shelling on Sunday of a U.N.-run shelter that
killed 10 people.
An Israeli defence official said the ceasefire, from 10 a.m. to 5
p.m. (0700 to 1400 GMT), would apply everywhere but areas of the
southern town of Rafah where ground forces have intensified assaults
after three soldiers died in a Hamas ambush there on Friday. "If the truce is breached, the military will return fire during the
declared duration of the truce," the official said. The official
said east Rafah was the only urban area in which troops and tanks
were still present, having been withdrawn or redeployed near Gaza's
border with Israel over the weekend.
 Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
said Israel's goal was "to assist with the humanitarian relief" of
the people of Gaza.
"Unfortunately, I understand that Hamas has publicly rejected the
ceasefire, and that would be the eighth ceasefire that Hamas has
rejected," he said on CNN.
Hamas, whose envoys are in Egypt for truce negotiations that Israel
has shunned in anger at Friday's ambush in Rafah, saw a possible
ruse in the humanitarian truce announcement.
Hams said attacking the house after the Israeli ceasefire began was
evidence that the truce was for media consumption only. "We urge our
people to continue to be cautious," said the group's spokesman, Sami
Abu Zuhri.
Israel is winding down its offensive in the absence of a mediated
disengagement deal with Hamas. It says the army is close to
completing the main objective of the ground assault - destruction of
cross-border infiltration tunnels from Gaza - and is prepared to
respond to Palestinian attacks.
The Israeli chief military spokesman said forces were deployed along
both sides of the Gaza border.
"Redeployment lets us work on the tunnels, provides defence (of
Israeli communities nearby) and lets the forces set up for further
activity. There is no ending here, perhaps an interim phase,"
Brigadier-General Motti Almoz told Army Radio.
In a predawn air strike Israel killed Danyal Mansour, a senior
commander of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group fighting alongside
Hamas.
Israel launched its offensive on July 8 following a surge in Hamas
rocket salvoes. It escalated from air and naval barrages to overland
incursions centred on Gaza's tunnel-riddled eastern frontier but
also pushing into densely populated towns.
Gaza officials say 1,797 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have
been killed and more than a quarter of the impoverished enclave's
1.8 million residents displaced. As many as 3,000 Palestinian homes
have been destroyed or damaged.
[to top of second column] |
"DISGRACEFUL SHELLING"
Many of those evacuees have taken shelter in U.N.-run facilities,
including a Rafah school where 10 people were killed on Sunday in
what Gaza officials said was an Israeli air strike.
Israel said it was investigating the incident and that it may have
been linked to an attempt by the military to kill Islamic Jihad
gunmen, as they drove nearby.
International outcry crested against the Israelis. U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the attack as a "moral
outrage and a criminal act" and called for those responsible for the
"gross violation of international humanitarian law" to be held
accountable.
The United States said it was "appalled" by the "disgraceful
shelling" and urged its Middle East ally to do more to prevent harm
to civilians. Washington also called for an investigation into
other, similar attacks on U.N. schools in Gaza.
Israel says it makes every effort to avoid non-combatant casualties
and that Hamas invites these by launching rockets from, and
entrenching gunmen inside congested civilian areas.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Hamas had turned
U.N. facilities into "terrorist hot spots". The main U.N. agency in
Gaza, UNRWA, says it has found rockets in three of its schools.
Israel has lost 64 soldiers in combat and three civilians to
Palestinian cross-border shelling that has emptied many of its
southern villages. Iron Dome interceptors, air raid sirens and
public shelters have helped stem Israeli casualties.
Egyptian truce mediation, supported by the United States and the
United Nations and also involving Qatar, Turkey and Western-backed
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has been complicated by the
dramatically divergent terms set by Israel and Hamas.
Israel has said Gaza must be stripped of tunnels and rocket stocks.
Hamas rules this out, and demands an easing of the crippling Gaza
blockade enforced by both Israel and Egypt, which consider the
Palestinian Islamists a security threat.
In Cairo on Sunday, Palestinian delegates said they also wanted
Israel to quit Gaza, facilitate reconstruction of the battered
territory and release Palestinian prisoners.
The Israelis, however, have shown little interest in resuming
negotiations after blaming Hamas for violating Friday's truce with
the Rafah ambush - an accusation echoed by the United States and the
United Nations, though disputed by Hamas.
(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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