Rocket Fire Resumes After Gaza Cease-Fire Ends

• News Code : 624758
• Source : New York Times

Thursday, precisely marking the designated end of the five-hour halt to hostilities both sides had agreed upon to provide a “humanitarian window” to residents after nine days of fighting

More than 40 rockets from the Gaza Strip whizzed into Israel starting at 3 p.m. Thursday, precisely marking the designated end of the five-hour halt to hostilities both sides had agreed upon to provide a “humanitarian window” to residents after nine days of fighting.

The Israeli military said one rocket hit the southern city of Ashkelon and another fell short and landed inside Gaza, as sirens again sounded repeatedly across southern Israel. A military spokesman said Israel had not immediately resumed strikes on Gaza.

The pause, requested by the United Nations, came after Israel foiled a predawn attack in which about 13 Palestinian militants emerged from a tunnel near a kibbutz, and as negotiations toward a Cairo-brokered cease-fire deal continued. It was interrupted by a brief flurry of mortar fire that fell in open ground near the Gaza border, but otherwise the quiet held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., allowing Gaza residents to safely come out of their homes to shop and survey the damage the battle had wrought.

Palestinian, Egyptian, Israeli and American officials said intense discussions were underway on terms for a cease-fire that could take effect as soon as 6 a.m. Friday, but none was willing to be quoted by name. A high-level Israeli delegation returned from Cairo, where President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and Tony Blair, the envoy of the so-called Quartet of Middle East peacemakers, met Wednesday with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt.

“The effort to achieve an end of the violence is ongoing,” said one senior Israeli official. “We’re not there yet.”

The attempted incursion into Israel via tunnel at 4:30 a.m. was the first during the current escalation.

An Israeli military spokesman said the militants were attacked from the air, and it was not immediately clear whether all had been killed. Residents of the Israeli border community nearest the exit of the tunnel, Kibbutz Sufa, were told to stay in their homes for several hours after the initial confrontation.

With the Palestinian death toll exceeding 220, many of them civilians, Israel and Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, agreed to the suspension of hostilities on Thursday at the request of the United Nations. One Israeli has been killed.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement that he hoped the discussions in Cairo, combined with the five-hour pause in fighting, “would lead to a more durable calm” and he expressed “support for international efforts, led by Egypt, to arrive at a sustainable cease-fire.”

As the pause took effect, gone were the thuds of F-16 airstrikes and the smell of cordite that had punctuated days and nights in Gaza. The ripping sound of Hamas rockets, more than 1,000 of which have been fired at Israel since July 8, was also absent.

Many streets in Gaza remained quiet, yet people were unsure how safe things would remain, as they were mindful of how a previous proposed cease-fire on Tuesday had broken down after just a few hours. On the beach near Gaza City’s small fishing harbor, where four boys were killed by an Israeli airstrike as they played on Wednesday, the children who often play there had not returned.

Still, the hours before the lull were punctuated with more Israeli airstrikes and rocket fire. The military said that since midnight it had carried out airstrikes against approximately 37 targets, including 15 concealed rocket launchers. Smuggling tunnels running beneath the Egypt-Gaza border were also hit, according to local reports.

The Health Ministry in Gaza reported three Palestinian fatalities early Thursday, including a man killed in an airstrike on a house in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, another man, 67, who was killed in a strike while on his way to the mosque for the dawn prayer in Rafah in the south and a woman, 71, who died of injuries she sustained in an earlier strike in Khan Younis.

And before the lull in the fighting, more than a dozen rockets were launched from Gaza into Israel, including a barrage aimed at the Tel Aviv area at about 9 a.m. At least one rocket was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and others apparently fell in open areas. There were no immediate reports of injuries on the Israeli side.