Israel calls limited truce after strike on UN school in Gaza kills 10

Israel announced it would be holding its fire in parts of Gaza for seven hours on Monday after a United Nations school sheltering displaced people in the southern Gaza Strip was hit Sunday by what a U.N. official said appeared to be an Israeli airstrike.

The limited and unilateral truce came after world powers condemned the attack that left 10 Palestinians sheltering at a school dead, as Israel was pulling some of its troops from Gaza.

The truce will only apply to parts of the Gaza strip where there is currently no military activity. Israeli strikes on Gaza continued on Monday prior to the "humanitarian window."

The announcement was received with distrust by Hamas, whose spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, warned the lcoal population to be wary.  

"We don’t trust their intentions and we ask our people to take extreme caution," Abu Zuhri told Al-Aqsa television.

The announcement came hours after the Israeli Defense Forces struck the Hamas-ruled territory despite signaling a unilateral winding down of its 27-day offensive.

Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said on Sunday that least 10 people were killed and 35 wounded after the strike near a boys' school in the town of Rafah.

Robert Turner, the director of operations for the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza, said preliminary findings indicated the blast was the result of an Israeli airstrike near the school, which had been providing shelter for some 3,000 people. He said at least one U.N. staffer appeared to be dead.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the strike "a moral outrage and a criminal act." 

Witnesses said the attack happened while people were waiting in line for food supplies. The Israeli military had no immediate comment although on Monday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "Israel does not aim its fire at civilians and is sorry for any attack that unintentionally hits civilians," without directly addressing the attack on the school."

"The locations of all these installations have been passed to the Israeli military multiple times," Turner said. "They know where these shelters are. How this continues to happen, I have no idea. I have no words for it. I don't understand it."

In a chaotic scene inside the compound of the U.N. school, several bodies, among them children, were strewn across the ground in puddles of blood. Bloody footprints stained the ground where people had rushed the wounded into ambulances.

"Our trust and our fate is only in the hands of God!" one woman cried.

Some of the wounded, among them children with bloody head bandages, were transported to the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah and others were treated in what seemed to be a makeshift clinic underneath a tent.

In some of its strongest criticism since the beginning of Israel's operation in Gaza, the United States said it was "apalled" at the incident and demanded a prompt investigation. "The suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians," said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

At least six U.N. facilities, including schools sheltering the displaced, have been struck by Israeli fire since the conflict began, drawing international condemnation. In each case Israel has said it was responding to militants launching rockets or other attacks from nearby.

In nearly four weeks of fighting, more than 1,800 Palestinians, mainly civilians, have been killed as well as nearly 70 Israelis, almost all soldiers.

Israel launched its air and naval offensive in Gaza on July 8 which subsequently escalated into a ground operation. Israel blamed Hamas rocket fire for starting the conflict, while Hamas has accused Israel of the initial provocation by its weeks-long crackdown on the group’s members in the West Bank.

Israel struck several targets in Gaza on Sunday. Artillery shells slammed into two high-rise office buildings Sunday in downtown Gaza City and large explosions could be heard seconds apart, police and witnesses said. Al-Kidra said more than 50 Palestinians were killed Sunday, including 10 members of one family in a single strike in the southern Gaza Strip. Israel said it carried out 180 strikes Sunday.

While fighting continued, several Israeli tanks and other vehicles were seen leaving Gaza and on Monday morning, the IDF anounced the seven-hour break with the caution that "The humanitarian window will not apply to the areas in which IDF soldiers are currently operating." A follow-up IDF announcement via Twitter added "We will continue to nautralize Hamas' tunnel network and will respond to any attempt to harm Israeli civilians or IDF soldiers."

It also said that residents of Abasan al Kabira and Abasan al Saghira, two villages east of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, could return home.  

In a televised address late Saturday, Netanyahu suggested troops would reassess operations after completing the demolition of Hamas military tunnels under the border. Security officials said the tunnel mission was winding down.

"After completing the anti-tunnel operation, the [Israel Defense Forces] will act and continue to act, in accordance with our security needs and only according to our defense needs, until we achieve our objective of restoring security to you, Israel's citizens," Netanyahu said.

While Israel's leaders now seek to end the current round of fighting on the basis that it has reestablished Israel's deterrent against attacks from Gaza, Hamas has said it will not stop fighting until Israel ends aggression against Gaza and ends its seven-year blockade.

Netanyahu said Hamas would pay an "intolerable" price if it continued to attack Israel, but analysts warn that Hamas will likely test that proposition.

"The war has wiped out entire families, devastated neighborhoods, destroyed homes, cut off all electricity and greatly limited access to water," writes Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group. "It will take years for Gaza to recover, if indeed it ever does. And it seems unlikely that Hamas will be ready for another fight anytime soon. So it has every incentive to try to achieve its core objectives now, especially an end to Gaza’s closure."

The Israeli military death toll rose to 64 after Israel announced that Hadar Goldin, a 23-year-old infantry lieutenant feared captured in Gaza, was actually killed in battle. His funeral is later Sunday. Three civilians have been killed on the Israeli side since hostilities began.

Israel had earlier said it feared Goldin had been captured by Hamas militants alongside two other soldiers who were killed Friday near Rafah in an ambush that was followed by heavy shelling that left dozens of Palestinians dead.

Large swaths of Gaza have been destroyed and some 250,000 people have been forced to flee their homes since the war began.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press