Fragile Israel-Hamas humanitarian truces takes effect

Israel tank fire killed three people in Gaza on Thursday, just minutes before a five-hour humanitarian ceasefire took effect, bringing a temporary reprieve from nine days of fighting.
Egypt meanwhile continued its efforts to broker a lasting truce but there seemed little appetite from both sides to end their confrontation, with Gaza militants firing off more rockets into the Jewish state during the night and Israel hitting back with air strikes.
And Israel's army said it had foiled an early morning "infiltration" into southern Israel by Gaza militants, who emerged through a tunnel in the early morning and were headed towards a kibbutz.
The two sides agreed to suspend hostilities from 0700 GMT until 1200 GMT following a UN request after an Egyptian-proposed ceasefire fell through on Tuesday.
"We are holding our fire until 3:00 pm (1200 GMT) today in order to enable a humanitarian window in Gaza. If Hamas fires, we will respond with force," Israel's army said on its Twitter account.
Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri confirmed Gaza militants were sticking to the agreement.
"All the factions including Hamas are implementing what they announced, a stop to the operations of the resistance," he told AFP.
A senior UN official said that it was unlikely any new aid would reach Gaza during Thursday's five-hour window.
"The Kerem Shalom crossing is closed today for security reasons, aid can't come through Erez -- it's not big enough -- so no new aid is going to enter Gaza today," the official said, referring respectively to Gaza's southern goods crossing and northern personnel border.
Instead, the truce would allow people who have fled their homes to go back to collect supplies from them, and help the UN get to areas it could not reach before, the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
- Tank fire kills 3 -
Just minutes before the cessation came into effect an Israeli tank fired on a house in southern Gaza killing three people, medics said.
Emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said four other people were seriously wounded in the attack on the house in Rafah.
The latest deaths take the Palestinian toll since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge on July 8 -- aimed at stamping out rocket fire by Gaza militants -- to 230 killed and 1,690 wounded.
The army said Israel had conducted at least 37 raids overnight on Gaza, while seven rockets were fired from the Strip, four of which landed in fields and the rest were intercepted by Israel's missile defences.
Since July 8, militants have fired more than 1,200 rockets at Israel, according to the Israeli military. They claimed their first Israeli life on Tuesday.
The early morning "infiltration" was ended by an air strike, which killed one militant and sent the others scurrying back to the tunnel, an Israeli officer said.
"This morning our forces successfully foiled a terror attack," army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner told journalists in a telephone briefing.
Thirteen militants emerged from a tunnel under the southern Gaza border, and were headed towards Sufa kibbutz, a small community just over a kilometre (mile) away, when they were spotted, Lerner said.
Israel forces killed at least one of the militants in an air raid, he said, leaving the rest rushing back towards the tunnel.
Hamas, the Islamist movement that is the main power in Gaza, has rejected initial Egyptian efforts for a full ceasefire, saying it had not been included in the discussions.
But in Cairo on Wednesday, a Hamas official met Egyptian leaders and Israeli news website NRG said that "Israeli representatives" would also join the deliberations.
And Egypt said Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas was to hold talks Thursday in Cairo with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Abbas on Wednesday in Cairo had met with Hamas deputy leader Mussa Abu Marzuq, who insisted on changes to the Egyptian truce plan including guarantees on opening border crossings to the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israel initially accepted the Egyptian initiative but later intensified its air strikes after Hamas rejected the plan, saying it had not been consulted.
- Obama offers support -
US President Barack Obama on Wednesday backed Egypt's efforts to broker a ceasefire, offering Washington's full diplomatic support.
"Over the next 24 hours, we'll continue to stay in close contact with our friends and parties in the region, and we will use all of our diplomatic resources and relationships to support efforts of closing a deal on a ceasefire," he said.
A Gaza-based human rights group says more than 80 percent of Palestinian casualties are civilians.
On Wednesday, four children died on the Gaza seashore and several people were wounded in an apparent Israeli naval bombardment, medics said.
Several hours after the strikes, the Israeli military described the deaths as "tragic" and said it was investigating the incident.
Source: AFP