GAZA CITY: The toll in Gaza rose above 1,000 dead on Saturday as more than 100 bodies were pulled from the rubble of homes throughout the coastal enclave during a truce, medics said.
The grim milestone came on the 19th day of a conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement, during a 12-hour truce that allowed Gaza residents to pick through the ruins of their homes.
Gaza toll mounts as fragile 12-hour truce takes hold
A 12-hour truce between Israel and Hamas entered into force Saturday, with emergency workers taking advantage of the lull to uncover 35 bodies from the rubble of Gaza homes.
The bodies were retrieved in the first three hours of the "humanitarian" truce that came into effect at 5am local time as top diplomats gathered in Paris to press efforts for a longer-term ceasefire.
They took the overall Palestinian death toll in the 19-day conflict to 926, many of them civilians. Meanwhile, the Israeli army said two more soldiers had been killed, taking its toll to 37 dead.
Soon after the fragile ceasefire took effect, Palestinians ventured out into the streets of Gaza, with many returning to areas that had been too dangerous to enter for days.
In northern Beit Hanun, southern Khan Yunis and eastern Shejaiya and Zaitun, they found scenes of utter destruction, with homes flattened and bodies lying in the streets and under rubble.
In Beit Hanun even the hospital was badly damaged by shelling, and AFP correspondents came across the charred body of a paramedic as emergency workers combed the debris for more dead.
Trails of blood on the ground were crossed by Israeli tank tracks, and there were holes where it appeared Israeli forces had been searching for Hamas tunnels.
Palestinian television showed footage of similar scenes in Shejaiya, which has been subjected to days of relentless Israeli tank fire.
Stiff bodies lay on the floor of a room in one building, one caked in dried blood, all of them covered in dust.
Emergency services spokesperson Ashraf al Qudra said the three hours into the truce, rescue workers recovered 13 bodies in Shejaiya in eastern Gaza City, 13 more in Deir al-Balah and Nusseirat in central Gaza, and nine in north Gaza.
Hamas said it and other militant groups in Gaza had reached "national consensus" for the truce. Israel later confirmed it would observe what it called "a humanitarian window" in Gaza.
The brief lull came after US Secretary of State John Kerry's proposal for a seven-day truce during which the two sides would negotiate a longer-term deal was rejected by Israel's security cabinet on Friday night.
Speaking after the rejection, at a news conference in Cairo with UN chief Ban Ki-moon, Kerry said Israel and Hamas "still have some terminology" to agree to on a ceasefire, but added they had "fundamental framework" on a truce.
On Saturday, the US diplomat flew to Paris where French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was to host him and their counterparts from Britain, Germany, Italy, Qatar, Turkey and the European Union.
On Friday, Ban had urged a truce that would last through the Muslim holiday of Eidul Fitr, marking the end of the fasting month of Ramazan, which is expected to fall around Monday.
But the two sides remain at odds over the shape of a final deal to end the fighting.
Hamas says any truce must include a guaranteed end to Israel's eight-year blockade of Gaza, while in Israel there are calls for any deal to include the demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip.
The situation in Gaza has created tensions in the West Bank, where protests against Israel's role in the conflict erupted after Friday prayers.
Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinian teenagers early Saturday morning in separate clashes in the north and south of the West Bank.
That followed the deaths of six Palestinians on Friday, including five shot dead by Israeli troops and one killed by an Israeli settler.
In Gaza, there have been international concerns about the number of civilians killed in the conflict, including in a Thursday attack in which at least 15 people were killed in the alleged Israeli shelling of a UN school.
The facility was sheltering some of the 100,000 Palestinians who have fled their homes during fighting.
Rights groups say about 80 percent of the casualties so far have been civilians, and the UN agency for children UNICEF said Friday that 192 children had been killed during the conflict.
The Israeli army on Saturday announced the death of two soldiers in Gaza fighting on Friday evening. It named one as Staff Sergeant Guy Boyland, 21, but did not give further details.
Three civilians have been killed inside Israel by rocket fire from Gaza, which continued Saturday morning before the truce with three shot down by missile defences and one falling on open ground, the army said.
It said militants fired 60 rockets into southern Israel on Friday, with another 15 intercepted.
COMMENTS (8)
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I doubt if there r any original Gaza residents left now . It's an ego problem between surreal and Hamas now .
@Raj - USA:
"In order for Israel to destroy these tunnels, they have no other option but to bomb civilian areas and this causes high civilian deaths."
A tunnel has two ends. Why does Israel always choose farther end?
Hamas is the democratically elected Government of Palestine. Hamas is not the problem. It is the people who have have stolen most of the land area as well as killing 1,000 Palestinians and injuring 6,000 of them in a couple of weeks, all with full US support.
@Dolphin: Hamas have built up tunnels that start form residential homes, hospitals, mosques and schools. These tunnels are several miles long, with concrete casing and even cars can pass through. These tunnels lead to areas within Israel or Egypt. Israel has found out more than 3000 such tunnels. Terrorists from Gaza use these tunnels to infiltrate to Israel and Egypt. In order for Israel to destroy these tunnels, they have no other option but to bomb civilian areas and this causes high civilian deaths. This is what Dr. Shahid Masood said in a recent Pakistani TV talk show. He said that he has personally seen some of these tunnels. He also said that this is the reason that the whole world has turned against Hamas.
Many in the world had sympathy for Palestinians but no one cares for them now as Hamas is hiding behind the civilians and is using them as human shield, knowingly and deliberately in the hope that it will win them sympathy. To make it worse for the Palestinians, the world sees muslims killing muslims everywhere in the world. It would be foolish for muslims to expect sympathy for Gaza killings only when muslims themselves are doing it to their own in much larger scale elsewhere.
@Dolphin: Ignorance is NOT bliss.
Sacrifice of thousands of Palestinians will go in vain if Hamas is not wiped out completely. As its not possible for Hamas to destroy Israel completely, then I would request Israel to end this cycle of violence once for all.
Even though I am a strong supporter of Israel, I find it unacceptable that for every terrorist Israel killed 3 were civilians. Much blame goes to Hamas. After the terror organisation was defeated in the Gaza 2009 conflict, they switched tactics. Now the Hamas gangsters used deplorable means like using children as human shields and firing rockets from schools and kindergartens. This explains why most of the Palestinian casualties today are civilians, contrary to the war in 2009 when the majority of those killed by Israel were Hamas fighters.
192 Children; such a casual statistic..........Mothers and Fathers picking up the remains of their child....! Shame on you Israel... With your history you should be sick with the shame of it all.
Are you no better than the NAZI's that machine gunned your people?
Why aren't the Jewish people protesting on mass....?