Attacks resume as Gaza truce ends

Israel declared the ceasefire to allow humanitarian supplies to enter Gaza. The seaside territory has been battered by a nearly month-long war between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

Late Monday, Palestinian officials said an Israeli air strike hit a target next to a desalination plant in Gaza, killing two people and wounding 16.

Palestinian officials say more than 1,880 people have been killed, most of them civilians, during the conflict. Sixty-seven people, all but three civilians, have been killed on the Israeli side.

The temporary ceasefire had slowed violence in the Gaza conflict.

However, an attack on an Israeli bus that killed one person in Jerusalem underscored the tensions still simmering in the region.

Several ceasefires have broken down during the war – including on Friday when an internationally negotiated truce collapsed amid violence and mutual recrimination between Israel and Hamas.

But with Hamas rocket fire tapering off over the last 24 hours and Israel’s ground operation in Gaza winding down, violence had been waning.

The lull was broken by the Jerusalem assault, which saw a man ram the front end of a construction excavator into an Israeli bus. Police described the incident as a “terrorist attack,” indicating Palestinian involvement.

The attack occurred on a main thoroughfare near Jerusalem’s light-rail line. The area is located near the unofficial line between Jewish west Jerusalem and east Jerusalem, the section of the city captured by Israel in 1967 and which is home to most of the city’s Arab population. Israeli media said the attacker came from an Arab area of the city.

Israel’s Channel 10 TV showed mobile phone footage of what it said was the attack, with the yellow excavator slamming its large shovel into the bus.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a police officer in the area opened fire and killed the attacker. A pedestrian was also killed, said Jerusalem district police chief Yossi Piranti.

In the past, Palestinian attackers have gone on deadly rampages with bulldozers in Jerusalem traffic.

“Because of the quick reaction of the police an even graver incident was avoided,” Mr Piranti said.

Shortly after the excavator attack, Israeli media reported that a gunman on a motorcycle shot and seriously wounded an Israeli soldier. Mr Rosenfeld said police were searching for the gunman in east Jerusalem.

The ceasefire did not apply to areas where troops were still operating, including the southern strip town of Rafah, which saw heavy fighting on Sunday, the military said.

Shortly after the ceasefire started, two Israeli missiles struck a house at the Shati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, killing one person and leaving up to 20 people missing, the Red Crescent and a Gaza health official said. The Israeli military said it was investigating the incident.

A separate Israeli strike killed Daniel Mansour, a commander in the Islamic Jihad group – a close ally of Gaza’s militant Palestinian Hamas rulers, the group said.

Israel launched the military operation in Gaza on July 8 in response to weeks of heavy rocket fire. It has since carried out more than 4,600 air strikes across the crowded seaside area. On July 17, it sent in ground forces in what it said was a mission to destroy the tunnels used by Hamas to carry out attacks inside Israel.

Hamas has fired more than 3,200 rockets into Israel during the war, with some intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defence system and many of the crude missiles landing in open areas away from cities.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under increasing international pressure to halt the fighting because of the heavy civilian death toll in Gaza.

Overnight, Israeli forces carried out new air strikes while Israeli tanks and navy gunboats fired dozens of artillery shells, targeting houses, agricultural plots and open areas, Gaza police said.

They said Israeli jet fighters destroyed three mosques, nine houses, five seaside chalets and a warehouse for construction material.

The Gaza police said Israeli navy boats also approached the northern coast of the strip and soldiers tried to land in the area. On the ground, there were clashes in Rafah and south-east of Gaza City, they said.

On Sunday, an apparent Israeli strike killed 10 people at a UN school that had been converted into a shelter in Rafah.

The United States said it was “appalled” by the “disgraceful” shelling and state department spokeswoman Jen Psaki called on Israel to do “more to meet its own standards and avoid civilian casualties”.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the attack on the school a “moral outrage and a criminal act” and demanded a quick investigation.

The Israeli military said it had targeted three wanted militants on a motorcycle in the vicinity and was “reviewing the consequences of this strike”. Israel said that it attacked 63 sites on Sunday and that nearly 100 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel.