News desk :An Israeli airstrike hit a home in the Gaza Strip on Monday, killing an 8-year-old girl during the first minutes of a unilateral Israeli truce in its month-old conflict with Hamas, Palestinian officials said.Reporters in Gaza City heard the whining of an aircraft followed by an explosion and saw a plume of smoke rising over the Shati refugee camp north of the city. Gaza’s Health Ministry said the blast wounded 30 people there.An Israeli military spokeswoman said the Shati refugee camp was covered by the truce. The military is investigating, she said.The military said an Israeli airstrike in Jabalia before the truce period killed an intelligence chief for Islamic Jihad, a militant group fighting alongside Hamas. Israel declared the truce as many of its forces were withdrawing from the seaside enclave. The military said it would hold fire from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. local time in most parts of Gaza to allow humanitarian aid to reach Gaza’s civilians and let some of the 260,000 people who have been displaced by the Israeli offensive to return home.Israeli attacks on Gaza continued on Monday and killed 11 people.Gaza’s health ministry said 27 Palestinians were reported dead in the hours before the truce, raising the monthlong toll to 1,835. Israel has lost 64 soldiers killed in combat.Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the humanitarian pause-the eighth since fighting began-aimed to “divert attention away from the Israeli massacres” and called on Gazans to exercise caution.Israel said the truce didn’t apply to the eastern part of Rafah, the territory’s southernmost city, where the military was working to destroy Hamas’s network of tunnels that burrow under the Gaza border into Israeli territory.Rafah has been the scene of Gaza’s heaviest fighting since late last week. On Sunday, shrapnel from an Israeli missile aimed at militants on a motorcycle there tore through a United Nations school crowded with displaced Palestinians, UN officials said, drawing international condemnation of Israel. Gaza’s health ministry said 10 people were killed.Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, called the attack near the school sheltering some 3,000 Palestinians who had fled their homes due to the fighting “a moral outrage and a criminal act”.”This madness must stop,” he said.Jen Psaki, the State Department spokesperson, said the US was “appalled” by the attack and called for a “full and prompt” investigation.”Israel must do more to meet its own standards and avoid civilian casualties,” she said.French President Francois Hollande said the bombing near the school was “unacceptable”, backing calls by Ban “to ask that those responsible for this violation of international law answer for their actions”, without saying who he considered responsible.
