GAZA CITY (Agencies)
The Palestinian Hamas movement said on Friday it will send a delegation to Egypt to discuss a proposed truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip, as a rocket fired from Gaza damaged a synagogue and another hit a kindergarten in the southern Israeli city of Sderot overnight.
"Hamas will send a delegation to Egypt on Monday to discuss a period of calm in Gaza," Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha told journalists, adding that the delegation would discuss conditions set by Israel.
Egypt has been brokering the negotiations and on Monday its intelligence chief Omar Suleiman presented Israeli officials with truce proposals that had already been approved by 12 armed Palestinian factions, including Hamas.
Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in June last year, hopes that in exchange for halting rocket attacks on southern Israel, the Israelis will lift their crippling blockade of the impoverished territory.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said, meanwhile, rockets fired by Gaza militants hit a synagogue and a kindergarten in Sderot. There were no casualties in the attacks, the spokeswoman said.
"In all, 11 rockets, including a long-range one, and nine mortar rounds were fired towards Israel on Thursday and during the night," she said.
Troops fired at a group of Palestinians in Gaza who had just fired a mortar round on Friday morning, she said, adding that several of the militants were hit.
Also in Gaza, a bomb exploded outside a Christian school on Friday, causing damage but no injuries, witnesses said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, which ripped through the gate of the Rosary Sisters School in the Gaza Strip shortly before dawn.
The school was also targeted by masked gunmen last year shortly after Hamas Islamists took control of the coastal territory in June. The school was torched and looted in that incident.
Over the past two years, there has been a rash of attacks targeting U.N.-run schools, the American International School, Internet cafes and video stores. Analysts have blamed radical Muslim groups with links to al Qaeda for the attacks. The Gaza Strip is home to some 3,000 Christians. |
