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29 March 2024

Gaza ceasefire to begin at 1600 GMT

A missile which witnesses said was fired by an Israeli aircraft is seen as it targets the house of Palestinian senior Islamic Jihad leader Nafez Azzam in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip August 26, 2014. A Gaza ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians will start at 1600 GMT, the state's MENA news agency said. Egypt's Foreign Ministry is expected to issue a more detailed statement on the new ceasefire deal soon, according to two Egyptian officials. REUTERS

Published
By AFP

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas announced on Tuesday that a deal had been reached with Israel over a long-term end to seven weeks of fighting in Gaza, at a speech in Ramallah.

"We announce the Palestinian leadership's agreement to Egypt's call for a comprehensive and lasting truce, beginning at 7:00 pm (1600 GMT) today," he said in a televised address at the start of a leadership meeting in the West Bank city.

Egypt said on Tuesday that a Gaza ceasefire that went into force at 1600 GMT provides for an immediate opening of Israeli border crossings to aid and reconstruction supplies.

Alongside a comprehensive ceasefire, the two sides agreed to the "simultaneous opening of the border crossings between Israel and Gaza to enable the rapid entry of humanitarian aid and relief and reconstruction supplies," a foreign ministry statement said.

The Egyptian-brokered deal also provides for the immediate extension to six nautical miles off the Gaza coast of the limit imposed by Israel on the territory's fishermen.

It foresees "continuation of indirect negotiations between the two sides on other matters within one month of the ceasefire taking effect."

Israel has agreed to observe an "unlimited" ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, a senior official told AFP on Tuesday, shortly after the deal was announced by the Palestinians.

"We have accepted, once again, an Egyptian proposal for an unconditional and unlimited-in-time ceasefire," the official said speaking on condition of anonymity, just moments before the truce went into effect at 1600 GMT.

Celebratory gunfire erupted in Gaza on Tuesday after a long-term truce agreed between Israel and the Palestinians went into effect at 1600 GMT, aimed at ending 50 days of bloodshed.

Thousands of Palestinians flooded on to the streets of Gaza City, including gunmen -- some from Hamas -- who fired in the air in celebration just moments after the truce began, AFP correspondents said.

Mosques used their loudspeakers to broadcast celebratory chants of "God is greatest" as the war torn enclave hailed the apparent end to some of the worst Israeli-Palestinian violence in a decade.