Gaza falls silent as three-day ceasefire takes hold

FE Team | Published: August 06, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

JERUSALEM, Aug 5, (agencies): Gaza fell silent on Tuesday after a month of intense combat, as a 72-hour truce accepted by Israel and Hamas came into effect and the last Israeli troops left the battered enclave.
Just minutes before the ceasefire took hold, however, Israel's military and Hamas both engaged in displays of firepower, seemingly determined to have the last word on the 29th day of their hostilities.
Sirens wailed in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as Hamas fired a barrage of 16 rockets over the border, one of which hit a Palestinian home in West Bank, causing damage but no injuries, witnesses said.
And in Gaza, Israeli warplanes staged at least five air strikes before the truce took hold, AFP correspondents said.
Israel also said all of its troops had withdrawn from Gaza after completing a mission to destroy a sophisticated network of cross-border attack tunnels, ending a ground operation which began on July 17.
"All of them have left," General Moti Almoz told army radio.
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said troops would be "deployed in defensive positions" outside of Gaza and would retaliate to any violation of the truce, which was announced by Egypt late on Monday.
The truce began after what an AFP correspondent said was the quietest night since the devastating operation began on July 8.
Medics said there were no deaths or injuries since midnight, although two people succumbed to injuries, putting the overall toll at 1,867.
On the ground, medics went into areas previously been inaccessible, with the worst devastation near the southern city of Rafah, which had been flattened in a massive Israeli assault which began Friday.
There they found the bodies of five militants-two from Hamas and three from Islamic Jihad.
Elsewhere, people were slowly returning to homes they had fled after being ordered out by the army, with dozens of people in the northern town of Beit Hanun heading home in cars or on donkey-drawn carts, an AFP correspondent said.
Among them was Rafat al-Masri, a father of five who found his family home in ruins.
"I've worked 40 years to have this house and now it is all destroyed," he said.
"There is nothing left, no rooms, no kitchen. Everything is totally destroyed."
It was the second time in four days that the two sides had agreed to observe a 72-hour humanitarian truce deal, with the last attempt on August 1 -- brokered by Washington and the UN-shattering in an explosion of violence within just 90 minutes.
The latest breakthrough emerged in Cairo where Palestinian and Egyptian mediators had held two-days of talks with Hamas and Islamic Jihad representatives.
Israel and Hamas, the de facto power in Gaza, separately confirmed to AFP they would abide by the new 72-hour ceasefire.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said a delegation of the Islamist movement's Gaza-based leaders would head to Cairo on Tuesday to join representatives of its exiled leadership.