Dozens of Bodies Found during Gaza Truce, Offensive Death Toll Nears 1000

Saturday, 26 July 2014

Dozens of Bodies Found during Gaza Truce, Offensive Death Toll Nears 1000

Local Editor

Bodies of dozens of Palestinians were pulled from the ruins of bombed-out homes in Gaza Saturday during a brief Humanitarian truce, taking the death toll of the offensive to nearly 1000.

More than halfway into a 12-hour ceasefire that began early Saturday, medics said 85 bodies had been retrieved from buildings ground into rubble across the Gaza Strip, pushing the death toll to 985 Palestinians killed in the besieged strip to 985.

Bodies found during Gaza truce

On the ground in Gaza, ambulances sped along roads to neighborhoods that have been too dangerous to enter for days.

Earlier on Saturday, a 12-hour humanitarian ceasefire came into effect in the Gaza strip.

The Zionist entity and the Palestinian resistance said they would observe the temporary ceasefire, at 0500 GMT, after US Secretary of State John Kerry was unable to reach a lasting truce during talks Friday in Cairo.

In the hours leading up to the pause, however, the violence continued, with Israeli air strikes killing 23 people, among them four children and a paramedic, Gaza medical services said.

An Israeli air strike in southern Gaza killed 16 members of a single family, hours ahead of a 12-hour humanitarian ceasefire, medics said.

The strike slammed into a home in the southern city of Khan Yunis, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said, killing 16 members of the Najjar family, including women and children.

The first strike of Saturday killed an on-duty paramedic in Khan Yunis, Qudra added.

The diplomatic push for a lasting truce is to resume from 0900 GMT on Saturday, when the foreign ministers of key players in the conflict are to gather for talks in Paris, including Kerry.

On Friday, the top US diplomat said in Cairo that both Tel Aviv and the resistance "still have some terminology" to agree to on a ceasefire, but added they had "fundamental framework" on a truce.

Under the proposal, once a humanitarian lull takes hold, delegations from the Israeli regime and the resistance would arrive in Cairo -- which has mediated past conflicts between the two sides -- for indirect talks that could lead to a lasting deal.