Dozens of bodies were pulled from the rubble after Israel ended its deadly war on Hamas. However, Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned the unilateral ceasefire Israel had begun early Sunday was fragile and was being constantly reassessed. "The government's decision allows Israel to respond and renew the fire if our enemy in the Gaza Strip continues its strikes," he said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
"This morning they again proved that the ceasefire is fragile and it has to be reassessed on a minute by minute basis," he said, according to AFP. "We hope that the fire ends. If it continues, the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) will respond."
At least 95 bodies, including those of several children, were pulled from the rubble, mostly in the northern towns of Jabaliya and Beit Lahiya, medics in the Strip said. In south Gaza, a 20-year-old man became the first Palestinian killed since the truce went into effect when Israeli troops shot him in the chest while he travelled in a vehicle near the southern town of Khan Yunis, medics conveyed.
But Israeli officials said that the clashes did not necessarily mean a return to all-out fighting. "There will no doubt be isolated incidents," Israeli Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said. "It will take two to three days for everything to end completely, for Hamas to understand that we are now in a new scenario."
The incidents in Gaza come amid a major diplomatic push by Egypt to turn Israel's unilateral ceasefire into a lasting truce, with President Hosni Mubarak hosting leaders from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Spain and Turkey.
Gaza's Hamas rulers warned that they would not accept the presence of a single Israeli soldier in Gaza. "We have clearly said: if Israeli troops remain in Gaza, this will be a wide window for the resistance against the occupation," Osama Hamdan, the group's representative in Lebanon, said in an interview with Al-Jazeera television.
On the ground, as Hamas congratulated the Palestinians on "victory" from mosque loudspeakers, Gaza residents cautiously ventured out into the streets to inspect the rubble that was once their homes. "We congratulate all the Palestinian people after the victory in the fight with the enemy," bellowed a voice from a Hamas mosque in central Gaza City.
On his aprt, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas repeated his call for a complete withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza and the re-opening of its border crossings, saying Israel's truce was "important and necessary but insufficient."
