Egyptian state media has announced a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel to halt the seven-week Gaza war, which has killed more than 2,100 people.
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Both Egyptian state television and the state news agency MENA announced the deal Tuesday night. Both said it begins at noon ET (7 p.m. local time), without elaborating.
The Israeli news website Haaretz.com tweeted that Israel had accepted the Egyptian-brokered deal.
Palestinians gather around the remains of a tower building housing offices that witnesses said was destroyed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza City early Tuesday. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)
Earlier, officials with from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the main groups fighting in Gaza against Israel, said a ceasefire had been reached. Israeli officials have not immediately commented. They described it as an "open-ended" ceasefire that included an Israeli agreement to ease its blockade of Gaza to allow relief supplies and construction materials into the war-battered territory.
Talks on more complex issues, such as Hamas' demand to build an airport and a seaport for Gaza, would begin in a month, he said.
Egypt planned an announcement at noon ET Tuesday.
If the terms of the ceasefire are confirmed, it would effectively mean Hamas in the end settled for terms that are similar to those that ended more than a week of fighting with Israel in 2012.
A ball of fire rises from an explosion on al-Zafer apartment tower following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City Saturday. Israeli aircraft fired two missiles at a 12-story apartment tower in downtown Gaza City on Saturday, collapsing the building. (Adel Hana/Associated Press)
Under those terms, Israel promised to ease restrictions gradually, while Hamas promised to halt rocket fire from Gaza at Israel. The truce held, but Gaza's border blockade remained largely intact.
Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade in 2007, after Hamas seized Gaza by force in 2007. Under the restrictions, virtually all of Gaza's 1.8 million people cannot trade or travel. Only a few thousand are able to leave the coastal territory every month.
During the war, Hamas had said it would only stop firing at Israel if the blockade were lifted. However, in recent days Israel has escalated its strikes in Gaza, toppling five highrise buildings housing offices, apartments and shops since the weekend.
This Gaza war has so far killed at least 2,133 Palestinians and wounded more than 11,000, according to Palestinian health officials and the United Nations. The UN estimates more than 17,000 homes have been destroyed, leaving 100,000 people homeless.
On the Israeli side, 68 people have been killed, all but four of them soldiers.
Earlier Tuesday, Israel bombed two Gaza City highrises with dozens of homes and shops, collapsing one building and severely damaging the other, in a further escalation of seven weeks of cross-border fighting with Hamas.
In the past, the military has hit targets in highrises in pinpoint strikes, but left the buildings standing. Since Saturday, it has toppled or destroyed five towers and shopping complexes in an apparent new tactic aimed at increasing pressure on Hamas.
The objects of the latest strikes contain apartments inhabited almost exclusively by middle-class Gazans, who up until now have been largely spared the considerable dislocation that has affected tens of thousands of other Gaza residents in densely populated neighbourhoods like Shijaiyah.
That has raised the possibility that the Israeli military is trying to use better-off Gazans, like professionals and Palestinian authority employees, to put pressure on Hamas to end the fighting on Israel's terms.
Tuesday's strikes leveled the 15-story Basha Tower with apartments and offices and severely damaged the Italian Complex, built in the 1990s by an Italian businessman, with dozens of shops and offices.
Both buildings were evacuated after receiving warnings of impending strikes. Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said 25 people were wounded in the attack on the Italian Complex.
One Italian complex resident, 38-year-old engineer Nael Mousa, said that he, his four children and 70-year-old mother had managed to flee the building late Monday night after a guard had alerted them of an impending strike, and that he was in his car some 300 meters (yards) away when it was bombed by an Israeli F-16 fighter jet.
Linked to militants
Within two hours, he said, it had been completely levelled by at least five additional bombs.
"I have become homeless, my children's fear will never be soothed, and something new has now been added to our feelings toward Israel and all the world which has been looking on without doing anything," he said.
The Israeli military said it targeted sites linked to militants Tuesday, but made no specific reference to the two buildings. Israel alleges Hamas often operates from civilian locations. The military has not said why it has begun collapsing large buildings, rather than carrying out pinpointed strikes against suspected militant targets located there.
In an email message to The Associated Press, military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said the strikes were "a direct result to Hamas' decision to situate their terrorist infrastructure within the civilian sphere including schools, hospitals and highrise buildings."
"We are determined to restore security to the State of Israel, and are unprepared to enable Hamas to continue to kill Israelis, target our towns and cities and expect to operate without consequence to their facilities, militant operatives and the leadership of their heinous attacks against Israel," he said.
Political scientist Mkhaimar Abu Sada from Gaza's Al Azhar University said he believed the Israeli tactic was a deliberate attempt to pressure Hamas by targeting middle class structures in neighbourhoods like Rimal and Tel al-Hawa, which have so far been spared the worst of the fighting.
He said the tactic will end up creating even greater antipathy toward Israel, but might also result in some tough questions being asked about Hamas's conduct of the war.
Hamas offices suspected
"Some people will now be wondering why Hamas did not accept a ceasefire proposal during the first week of the fighting, when the damage here was still relatively small," he said.
Retired Israeli air force brigadier general Shlomo Brom, now a fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said he was doubtful that the highrise structures had been targeted solely because of their middle-class makeups.
"I have no doubt that these buildings were hit primarily because they contained offices or other facilities that belonged to Hamas," he said.
Also on Tuesday, two people were killed in an airstrike on a house in Gaza City, police said.
Israel's military said it carried out 15 air strikes in Gaza on Tuesday.
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