Hamas asks for new truce as Israel resumes assault

GAZA CITY, July 27 (agencies): Renewed Israeli raids on Gaza, which followed a 24-hour lull, killed nine Palestinians on Sunday, raising the overall toll from the 20-day operation to more than 1,050.
Following a 24-hour period in which Israel held its fire, the strikes resumed at 0700 GMT on Sunday with an initial three people killed by shelling, two of them in central Gaza and a third near Khan Yunis in the south, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.
Six more were killed in the following few hours, including an elderly Christian woman who was killed in an air strike on western Gaza City, which also seriously wounded her son, Qudra said.
The Islamist Hamas movement Sunday belatedly accepted diplomatic calls for an extension of a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza shortly after Israel said it was resuming its devastating military assault.
There was no immediate word on whether Israel would reciprocate, with a Hamas spokesman saying the movement had agreed to halt its fire from 1100 GMT in response to a request from the United Nations.
The move came just hours after Israel said it would no longer abide by a unilateral ceasefire which had been rejected out of hand by Hamas as unacceptable without a full withdrawal of Israeli armour from the war-torn Gaza Strip.
With the situation rapidly changing, there was no immediate indication that either side had halted their fire, with several loud explosions heard in Gaza City, an AFP correspondent said.
The renewed violence came after a rare 12-hour break in the hostilities on Saturday, which was respected by both sides, with world powers urging both Israel and Hamas to extend the temporary truce.
"We all call on parties to extend the humanitarian ceasefire currently in force, by 24 hours that could be renewed," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said at a Paris summit also attended by the top diplomats from the US, Britain, Germany, Italy, Qatar, Turkey and the EU.