The Israeli military on Monday lifted protective restrictions on residents in the south, while Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement reported a ceasefire deal had been reached to end the deadliest fighting between the two sides since a 2014 war.
The escalation killed 25 people on the Gaza side, militants and civilians, while on the Israeli side four civilians were killed by incoming rocket fire.
The Islamic Jihad group, which Israel accused of instigating the latest violence, confirmed that a “mutual and concurrent” truce had been brokered by Egypt.
Egyptian mediators, along with officials from Qatar and the UN, helped reach the deal, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said, adding that Hamas could still use “different pressuring tools” to get Israel to ease a crippling blockade of Gaza.
“The campaign is not over, and it requires patience and judgement,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
The intense fighting over the past two days came to a halt early on Monday and residents on both sides went back to their daily routines.
Schools and roads had been closed, and Israelis had been urged to remain indoors and near bomb shelters as intense rocket fire pounded the area.
In the fighting that erupted over the weekend, Palestinian militants fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, while the Israeli military responded with airstrikes on about 350 militant targets inside Gaza, including weapons storage, attack tunnels and facilities for producing and launching rockets.
Israel also deployed tanks and infantry forces to the Gaza frontier, and put another brigade on standby.
A Hamas commander allegedly involved in transferring Iranian funds to the group was killed in an airstrike, in an apparent return to Israel’s policy of knocking out militant leaders.
Palestinian medical officials reported 25 deaths, including at least 10 militants, as well as three women, two of them pregnant, and two babies.
The four Israeli civilians killed were the first Israeli fatalities from rocket attacks since the 50-day war in 2014. One was killed when his vehicle was hit by a Kornet anti-tank missile near the Gaza border.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on an airstrike that killed six civilians, including a 12-year-old boy and an infant, when it destroyed a five-story apartment block in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya.
The Gaza Ministry of Public Works and Housing said that 130 housing units were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.
Egyptian mediators had been working with the UN to broker a ceasefire. Under past Egyptian-brokered deals, Israel has agreed to ease its joint blockade of Gaza with Egypt in exchange for a halt to rocket fire.
Signs of normal life slowly returned to Gaza, with banks opening after three days. Schools were to reopen yesterday.
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