Gaza ceasefire comes into force after day-long flare-up

GAZA: A ceasefire between Israel and Gaza´s dominant Hamas Islamists appeared largely to be holding on Sunday, ending the most intensive flare-up in violence around the Palestinian enclave since a 2014 war.

In a day of fierce fighting on Saturday, Israel carried out dozens of air strikes in Gaza, killing two teenage boys, and militants fired more than 100 rockets across the border, wounding three people in a southern Israeli town.

The ceasefire, the second between the two sides to be brokered by Egypt this year after a previous day-long flare-up in May, came into force late on Saturday.“Everyone understands that unless the situation is defused, we will very quickly be back to another confrontation,” UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov told reporters at his office in Gaza.

Israel´s military said that, after assessing the situation, it was reinforcing its Iron Dome rocket defense batteries in the greater Tel Aviv area and in the south, where thousands of residents spent much of the Jewish sabbath in shelters.

It also called up a limited amount of reservists to help out it aerial defense command. Israel said that in the initial hours of the ceasefire militants fired two rockets across the border, of which one was intercepted by the Iron Dome system. There were no reports of an Israeli counter-attack in Gaza. Later, two mortar bombs were fired towards Israel, which responded by striking the launch tube, the military said. Weekly clashes at the Israel-Gaza border have kept tensions at a high for months. More than 130 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces during protests at the frontier held every week since March, including a teenager on Friday, Gaza medics said. There have been no Israeli fatalities. Israel says Hamas has been orchestrating the demonstrations, dubbed The Great March of Return, to provide cover for militants´ cross-border attacks.