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 Women in Beit Hanoun wailed as medics pulled three dead relatives
from a home struck overnight by an Israeli air strike. Near Khan
Younis, 18 members of a family died from tank shelling shortly
before the truce began, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
Gaza health officials said rescue workers have so far pulled out 40
bodies from under the rubble since the truce began.
Israel's military pledged to hold fire for 12 hours from 8 a.m. (1
a.m. EDT) but press on searching for tunnels used by militants. The
Islamist group Hamas, which dominates Gaza, said all Palestinian
factions would abide by the brief truce.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has been spearheading
international efforts to end 19 days of conflict in which 940
Palestinians, many of them civilians, have been killed. The
diplomatic push was to continue on Saturday in Paris.
Israel said two more of its soldiers were killed in pre-truce
fighting Gaza, bringing the army death toll to 37 as troops battled
militants in tiny Mediterranean enclave that is home to 1.8 million
Palestinians. Three Israeli citizens have also been killed by
rockets fired from Gaza.
Residents of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza strip walked through
destroyed streets lined with damaged houses and entire buildings
reduced to rubble. Some who had not seen each other for days
embraced as they surveyed the wreckage around them.
"We lived through a night of horror. The shelling was all around our
house," said Hanan al-Zaanin, standing with four of her children
outside their home in Beit Hanoun, an area which has seen fierce
fighting.
Many of Beit Hanoun's 30,000 residents had fled the area. "We hope
the calm lasts and they find a solution so fighting ends. We are
afraid for our children's safety," she said, adding she will not
leave her home. "There is no place to go."
Israeli tanks stood by as people searched through the debris for
their belongings, packing whatever they could, blankets, furniture
and clothes in to taxis, trucks, rickshaws, and donkey carts before
fleeing the town.
Fighting continued until the truce took hold. Militants fired a
barrage of rockets out of Gaza, triggering sirens across much of
southern and central Israel. No injuries were reported and the Iron
Dome interceptor system shot down some missiles.
Minutes after the truce began, many Gaza residents rushed out of
their homes and lined up outside banks to withdraw cash so they
could stock up on supplies.
CEASEFIRE EFFORTS
Diplomats will pursue efforts to secure a ceasefire in Paris on
Saturday, with France hosting officials from the United States,
Britain, Germany, Italy, the European Union, Turkey and Qatar, a
French diplomatic source said.
Kerry met on Saturday with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
in Paris, officials said, to continue crafting a ceasefire proposal.
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Israel, which began its offensive on July 8, on Friday rejected
international proposals for an extended ceasefire, a government
source said. But Kerry said in Cairo that no formal proposals had
yet been put forward. He said there were still disagreements on
the terminology, but he was confident there was a framework that
would ultimately succeed and that "serious progress" had been made,
although there was more work to do.
Israel's and Hamas's positions are still far apart.
Hamas wants an end to an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza before
agreeing to halt hostilities. Israeli officials said any ceasefire
must allow the military to carry on hunting down Hamas's tunnel
network that criss-crosses the Gaza border.
Israel says some of the tunnels reach into Israel and are meant to
carry out attack on Israelis. Other underground passages serve as
weapon caches and Hamas bunkers.
The Gaza turmoil has stoked tensions in east Jerusalem and the
occupied West Bank, some of which U.S.-backed Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas governs in uneasy coordination with Israel.
Medics said eight Palestinians were killed in incidents near the
cities of Nablus and Hebron on Friday, including one shooting that
witnesses blamed on an apparent Jewish settler.
On Thursday night, 10,000 demonstrators marched in solidarity with
Gaza near the Palestinian administrative capital Ramallah, a scale
recalling mass revolts of the past.
Protesters surged against an Israeli army checkpoint, throwing rocks
and Molotov cocktails, and Palestinian medics said one was shot dead
and 200 wounded when troops opened fire.
Abbas's Palestine Liberation Organization called for more
demonstrations in the West Bank and said it was at the same time
working to secure a ceasefire deal.
(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Paris; Writing by Maayan
Lubell; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
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