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Israel pounds Gaza amid talk of truce

By REUTERS
August 10, 2018

GAZA/SDEROT, Israel: A Palestinian official said on Thursday armed factions in Gaza were prepared to halt a round of rocket attacks on southern Israel if the Israeli military stopped its strikes after two days of cross-border violence.

A pregnant Palestinian woman and her 18-month-old child, and a member from the Islamist Hamas group that rules Gaza, were killed in the Israeli attacks, and at least five civilians were wounded, local medical officials said. The Israeli military said seven people were wounded in southern Israel. One was identified by her employer as a Thai agricultural worker.

The flare-up came after officials on both sides had talked about potential progress in an effort by the United Nations and Egypt to broker a truce to end months of violence and alleviate deepening humanitarian and economic hardship in the Gaza Strip.

A Palestinian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, raised the prospect of an imminent end to the current fighting. "Factions of the resistance consider this round of escalation over as far as we are concerned, and the continuation of calm depends on the behaviour of the occupation," the official said, using militant factions’ term for Israel.

The Israeli military declined to comment on the official’s remarks. The official, at a command centre used by armed groups in Gaza, said they had been "responding to crimes" by Israel - a reference to the killing on Tuesday, in disputed circumstances, of two Hamas gunmen.

The latest fighting has stayed within familiar parameters. The rocket fire from Gaza has not targeted Israel’s heartland and the Israeli military said its air strikes were limited to Hamas installations.

Yuval Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s inner cabinet, told Israel Radio before the Palestinian officials comments that Israel was "not eager for war" but would make no concessions to Hamas. Netanyahu was due to hold a security cabinet meeting later in the day after consultations with security officials.