Palestinian death toll in Gaza offensive tops 1,000

The toll in the 19-day Israeli offensive has climbed to 1,030, with the bodies of at least 130 more Palestinians being recovered from rubble across the Gaza Strip, officials said Saturday.

>>IANS/bdnews24.com
Published : 26 July 2014, 03:21 PM
Updated : 26 July 2014, 07:15 PM

Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman of the health ministry in Gaza, told reporters that rescue teams, medical crews and paramedics pulled out the corpses from the rubble during a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds in Gaza Saturday, Xinhua reported.

An earlier report put the death toll at 985 with the bodies of around 85 Palestinians being found under the rubble in eastern Gaza city and the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis during truce here Saturday.

A 12-hour ceasefire came into effect in the Gaza Strip Saturday as Hamas and Israel accepted a UN proposal late Friday night, enabling rescue teams and paramedics to search for bodies and evacuate the wounded.

In the meantime, officials from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Qatar and Turkey, as well as the UN, gathered in Paris in an effort to draft a long-term ceasefire agreement.