A cease-fire between Israel and Hamas continued strong on its second day as Israel removed troops from Gaza on Wednesday, ahead on negotiations in Cairo on a long-term truce and a broader deal for the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, according to Reuters.
Minutes before the truce began at 8 a.m., Hamas launched a salvo of rockets, calling them revenge for Israel's "massacres". Israel's anti-missile system shot down one rocket over Jerusalem, police said, Reuters reported. Another hit a house in a town near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, but there were no casualties.
The cease-fire is the longest lull in a war that has killed nearly 1,900 Palestinians. Israel has lost 67 people, including three civilians, Reuters reported. Several previous truce attempts by Egypt and other regional powers, overseen by the United States and United Nations, failed to calm the worst Israeli-Palestinian fighting in two years.
The war broke out on July 8, when the Israeli military began bombarding targets in Gaza in an attempt to stop Hamas from launching rockets at Israel, according to Reuters. On July 17, Israel sent ground troops into the densely-populated territory to destroy underground tunnels it said Hamas had constructed for attacks inside Israel.
Israeli-Palestinian tensions were soaring in the wake of the June killings of three Israeli teenagers, whose bodies were discovered two weeks after they disappeared in the West Bank, Reuters reported.
Israel accused Hamas of being behind the abductions, and subsequently carried out a massive ground operation in the West Bank, arresting hundreds of Hamas operatives as part of a manhunt, according to Reuters. Then, in early July, an Arab teenager was abducted and burned alive by Israeli extremists in an apparent revenge attack. Six Jewish Israelis were arrested in that killing.
On Wednesday, Israel's justice ministry also confirmed that the suspected mastermind behind the killing of the three Israeli teens had been arrested in July, Reuters reported. The suspect, Husam al-Qawasmi, allegedly led a three-man cell that Israeli prosecutors say kidnapped and murdered the teens.
