Israelis and Palestinian militants exchanged bomb and rocket
attacks on Saturday, as the outcome of their third major war ebbed into
uncertainty following the failure of Egyptian-brokered talks to forge a formal
cease-fire.
Palestinian militants in Gaza fired 27 rockets at Israel in
the first 17 hours of Friday, while Israel struck 47 targets in the coastal
enclave, mostly from manned fighter jets and drones, the Israeli military said.
It wasn't known whether fighters for Hamas or some smaller
Palestinian armed faction in Gaza carried out the rocket attacks.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said
Israeli forces hit infrastructure in Gaza that served as rocket launchers,
control centers and weapons caches.
Five people were killed in the Israeli strikes, including
three in an attack on a mosque in the Nusseirat refugee camp and two when a
motorcycle was hit in the Maghazi refugee camp, Gaza's Health Ministry said.
The deaths raised the overall death in the Gaza Strip during
the month long war to 1,903, the ministry said. A total of 67 people in Israel
have been killed, including three civilians, according to Israeli officials.
The fighting follows a three-day cease-fire that lapsed on
Friday morning as Israel and Hamas failed to reach an agreement in Cairo on an
extension of the truce during talks.
After the cease-fire ended, fighting resumed, with
Palestinian fighters launching 65 rockets at Israeli, and Israeli forces
replying with 63 attacks, Israel said.
Despite the flurry of fire, Western officials said they saw
a measure of military restraint as the day progressed on Friday, with the level
of fire far below the intensity during other days of the war.
This indicated, they said, that Israel and the Islamist
movement that rules the Gaza Strip wanted to keep open the option of returning
to the negotiating table.
In the view of one Israeli official, Hamas is now trying to
force Israel to choose between concessions and a full reoccupation of the Gaza
Strip.
"These people are trying to do two things: convince us
to give them more, or if it fails, convince us that we should come in" to
Gaza, the official said. "We don't want to do it, because we don't want to
be responsible for Gaza."
Palestinian negotiators were still in Cairo on Saturday, and
said they were willing to resume talks on a new truce. The Israeli delegation
to the talks left Egypt on Friday after negotiations broke down.
The Palestinians are demanding an easing of the Israeli
economic blockade on Gaza before agreeing to another temporary truce. Israel
said it would agree to nothing while it was under fire
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