COVID-19 Latest
World|life|August 4, 2014 / 05:39 PM
Palestinians accuse Israel of breaking seven-hour Gaza ceasefire

AKIPRESS.COM - Palestinians Palestinians accused Israel of breaking its own ceasefire on Monday by launching a bomb attack on a refugee camp in Gaza that killed an eight-year-old girl and wounded 29 other people, Reuters reports.

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 UN-run shelter that killed 10 people.

An Israeli defense official said the ceasefire, from 10 am to 5 pm, 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.

Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister, said Israel's goal was “to assist with the humanitarian relief” of the people of Gaza.

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.

Israel 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.

All rights reserved

© AKIpress News Agency - 2001-2024.

Republication of any material is prohibited without a written agreement with AKIpress News Agency.

Any citation must be accompanied by a hyperlink to akipress.com.

Our address:

299/5 Chingiz Aitmatov Prosp., Bishkek, the Kyrgyz Republic

e-mail: english@akipress.org, akipressenglish@gmail.com;

Follow us:

Log in


Forgot your password? - recover

Not registered yet? - sign-up

Sign-up

I have an account - log in

Password recovery

I have an account - log in