News Service from House Harris

MID: Israeli forces launch Gaza withdrawal

GAZA CITY, Jan 18 AFP - Israel began withdrawing troops from the Gaza Strip on Sunday as a fragile unilateral ceasefire came into effect after its deadliest offensive ever launched on the battered Palestinian territory.

As medics scrambled to pull dozens of bodies from the mountains of rubble left by Israel's three-week offensive, Palestinian militants said they would hold their fire for one week to allow Israeli troops to withdraw.

Egypt, meanwhile, hosted an international summit of European and Arab leaders aimed at shoring up the truce, while officials in Cairo held talks with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas with the same goal.

European leaders called on Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and on militants to stop firing rockets, before heading to Jerusalem to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

And Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced plans to host an international conference to help rebuild Gaza.

"This fragile ceasefire has got to be followed immediately, if it is to be sustainable, by humanitarian access... by troop withdrawals, by an end to arms trafficking," said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

After exchanges of gunfire and an air strike punctured what Olmert acknowledged was a "fragile" unilateral ceasefire, Gaza's Hamas rulers and other armed groups announced their own one-week ceasefire.

"We in the Palestinian resistance movements announce a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and demand that enemy forces withdraw in a week and open all the border crossings to permit the entry of humanitarian aid and basic goods," Mussa Abu Marzuk, the deputy leader of Hamas's politburo, said in Damascus.

Dawud Shihab, a Gaza-based spokesman for Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed faction, said the truce would give an opportunity for Arab governments to put pressure on Israel to withdraw all its troops after the three-week blitz.

"During this period, the resistance is ready to respond to all efforts by the Egyptians, Turks, Syrians and Arabs," he told AFP.

Militants in the Gaza Strip, however, fired at least 18 rockets and mortar rounds at Israel following the announcement, wounding at least one person, the army said.

The military confirmed troop withdrawals had begun after witnesses saw Israeli tanks and troops pull back from key positions in and around Gaza City toward the border fence which surrounds the impoverished territory.

Olmert announced late on Saturday that he had ordered an end to offensive operations in Gaza after 22 days of combat but that troops would remain and fire back if attacked.

After the ceasefire came into effect at 2am (1100 AEDT) on Sunday, Gaza enjoyed its first bomb-free night in more than three weeks, but there were soon signs that the calm may unravel.

As militants fired rockets and Israel launched retaliatory air strikes, troops shot dead an eight-year-old girl in the northern town of Beit Hanun and a 20-year-old man near Khan Yunis in the south, medics said.

Gaza medics took advantage of the halt in the fighting to rush to areas which had been inaccessible, pulling at least 95 bodies from the rubble, including those of several children.

The discoveries brought the overall death toll since Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on December 27 to at least 1,300, medics said, making it by far the deadliest Israeli offensive ever launched on the Gaza Strip.

On the ground, as Hamas congratulated the Palestinians on "victory" from mosque loudspeakers, Gaza residents cautiously ventured out onto the streets, surveying the rubble that was once their homes.

"Everything has been completely destroyed," said Yahia Karin, 54, in Zeitun, a Gaza City neighbourhood ravaged by furious battles between Israeli ground troops and Hamas militants.

On the diplomatic front, Mubarak said on Saturday that Egypt "will continue its efforts as soon as there is a ceasefire to restore the truce and lift the blockade."

Israel and Egypt have sealed the territory off from all but vital humanitarian aid since Hamas seized power in June 2007.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas repeated his call for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the reopening of the enclave's border crossings, saying Israel's truce is "important and necessary but insufficient".

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev, meanwhile, stressed that Israel is not a partner to any agreement with Hamas, a group which is sworn to the Jewish state's destruction.

"If Hamas does not attack Israel and does not provoke Israel, we will honour the ceasefire," he said. "We do not want to stay in Gaza. We have no intention of occupying it, and we will withdraw as soon as the situation permits."