Mail Online :Displaced Gazans have begun returning to their homes from UN shelters after the latest ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect yesterday.The 72-hour truce, which started at 8am local time (6am BST), was agreed by both sides in the month-long conflict which has seen hundreds killed.Previous international attempts to broker a temporary halt in the fighting have failed with some ceasefires ending just minutes after they started.During the latest 72-hour truce, Israel and Hamas are to hold indirect talks in Cairo on a broader deal that would prevent future cross-border violence. The Israeli military said all its ground troops had pulled out of Gaza by the start of the new ceasefire.Gaza officials say the war has killed 1,834 Palestinians, most of them civilians.Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed since fighting began on July 8, after a surge in Palestinian rocket launches.Israeli ground forces withdrew from the Gaza Strip ahead of the truce, with a military spokesman saying their main goal of destroying cross-border tunnels had been completed.Troops and tanks would be ‘redeployed in defensive positions outside the Gaza Strip and we will maintain those defensive positions,’ spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said, reflecting Israeli readiness to resume fighting if attacked.Israel was expected to send delegates to join talks in Cairo to cement a longer-term deal during the course of the truce.For now, Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz told Israel’s Army Radio: ‘There are no agreements. As we have already said, quiet will be answered with quiet.’A British aid worker had allegedly been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.The Foreign Office has said it is investigating reports that the man died on Sunday night in the southern city of Rafah.Triends of Kadir Islam, from Rochdale, said he was killed in an Israeli strike while reportedly delivering supplies to a hospital. Prime Minister David Cameron said the Government is urgently looking into the news.Cameron said: ‘I’m extremely concerned about these reports and we are doing everything we can to get to the bottom (of them) and find out exactly what has happened.’Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the Islamist group had also informed Egypt ‘of its acceptance of a 72-hour period of calm,’ beginning on Tuesday.The US State Department praised the truce and urged the parties to ‘respect it completely’.Spokeswoman Jen Psaki added that Washington would continue its efforts to help the sides achieve a ‘durable, sustainable solution for the long term’.Efforts to cement the ceasefire into a lasting truce could prove difficult, with the sides far apart on key demands, and each rejecting the other’s legitimacy.Hamas rejects Israel’s existence, and vows to destroy it, while Israel denounces Hamas as a terrorist group and eschews any ties.Besides the truce, Palestinians demand an end to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade on impoverished Gaza and the release of prisoners including those Israel arrested in a June crackdown in the occupied West Bank after three Jewish seminary students were kidnapped and killed.Israel has resisted those demands in the past.
