Gaza: truce takes effect between Israel and Islamic Jihad after days of fighting

A truce between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad has taken effect in the Gaza Strip after three days of cross-border fighting triggered by surprise Israeli airstrikes.

Earlier, officials from Egypt, which mediated the deal, said that a truce would start at 11.30pm (9.30pm BST) on Sunday.

A total of 36 Palestinians, among them 11 children, as well as members of Islamic Jihad, have now been killed in the bombing campaign and more than 300 people have been injured, while 13 Israelis have been treated in hospital for minor injuries as hundreds of retaliatory rockets were fired across the Gaza frontier towards the south of the country.

Israel said a stray rocket fired by Islamic Jihad had killed several children in Jabalia, northern Gaza, on Saturday. Islamic Jihad has not commented on the claim, while the aligned group Hamas, which rules the strip, blamed the attack on Israel.

The flare-up is the worst outbreak of violence between Israeli and Palestinian militants since an 11-day-war last May. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had signalled that the campaign was supposed to last about a week; Israel has inflicted significant losses on Islamic Jihad in the last three days, including the targeted killings of two senior commanders.

A joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed after Hamas seized control in 2007 has turned electricity and clean water into scare commodities and trapped a population struggling with about 50% unemployment and crumbling medical infrastructure.

The contested area is holy to Muslims and Jews, who call it the Temple Mount. Informally, Jews are allowed to visit but not pray at the site. In recent years, however, increasing numbers of Jewish visitors, sometimes praying or with police escorts, have exacerbated longstanding Palestinian fears that Israel plans to annex the compound.

The Gaza Strip has remained relatively quiet since the war in May last year, which killed 256 people in Gaza and 14 people in Israel. The new round of fighting came as Israel prepares for its fifth elections in four years after the collapse of a short-lived coalition government, which ousted the longtime prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.