By Adel ZAANOUN, John DAVISON
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - The bodies of dozens of Palestinians were pulled from the ruins of bombed-out homes in Gaza Saturday during a brief truce that top diplomats meeting in Paris urged Israel and Hamas to extend.
US Secretary of State John Kerry meanwhile met with counterparts from Europe and the Middle East in Paris, who urged that the ceasefire be extended.
"We all call on parties to extend the humanitarian ceasefire," France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters after meeting Kerry and counterparts from Britain, Germany, Italy, Qatar and Turkey, as well as an EU representative.
On the ground in Gaza, ambulances sped along roads to neighbourhoods that have been too dangerous to enter for days.
Just over halfway through the truce, they had already found the bodies of 85 people in the rubble, pushing the death toll to 985 Palestinians killed in the coastal enclave since the conflict began on July 8.
View galleryRescue workers remove a body from the rubble of their …
Rescue workers remove a body from the rubble of their home following an Israeli air strike on Khan Y …
On the Israeli side, 37 soldiers have been killed, along with two Israeli civilians and Thai foreign worker.
Palestinians ventured onto Gaza's streets after the truce took effect, some eager to check on homes they had fled, others to stock up on food and other items while it was still safe to do so.
In many places they found astonishing devastation: apartment buildings levelled, entire blocks of homes completely wiped out by relentless Israeli bombardment.
In northern Beit Hanun, even the hospital was badly damaged by shelling, and AFP correspondents came across the charred body of a paramedic as emergency workers combed the debris for more dead.
There were similar scenes in Shejaiya, where stiff bodies lay on the floor of a room in one building, one caked in dried blood, all of them covered in dust.
View galleryPalestinians gather outside the morgue of the main …
Palestinians gather outside the morgue of the main hospital in the northern district of Beit Hanun i …
- 'Humanitarian window' -
To the east of southern Khan Yunis, residents hesitated to enter the Khuzaa neighbourhood, saying Israeli forces remained inside the border area.
And in nearby Bani Suheila, where 20 people were killed in a single Israeli air strike shortly before the truce began at 0500 GMT, women and children wept as they returned to discover their homes destroyed.
Hamas and Israel agreed to the "humanitarian window" in the early hours of Saturday morning, after a US proposal for a seven-day truce during which the two sides would negotiate a longer-term deal was rejected by Israel's security cabinet on Friday night.
Speaking after the rejection, at a news conference in Cairo with UN chief Ban Ki-moon, Kerry said Israel and Hamas "still have some terminology" to agree to on a ceasefire, but added they had "fundamental framework" on a truce.
View galleryPalestinians stand on Israeli military equipment left …
Palestinians stand on Israeli military equipment left behind during the ground offensive, east of Kh …
But the two sides remain at odds over the shape of a final deal to end the fighting.
Hamas says any truce must include a guaranteed end to Israel's eight-year blockade of Gaza, while in Israel there are calls for any deal to include the demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip.
- West Bank tensions -
The situation in Gaza has created tensions in the West Bank, where protests against Israel's role in the conflict erupted after Friday prayers.
Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinian teenagers early Saturday morning in separate clashes in the north and south of the West Bank.
View galleryUS Secretary of State John Kerry steps off his plane …
US Secretary of State John Kerry steps off his plane upon his arrival in Paris, France on July 26, 2 …
That followed the deaths of six Palestinians on Friday, including five shot dead by Israeli troops and one killed by an Israeli settler.
In Gaza, there have been international concerns about the number of civilians killed in the conflict, including in a Thursday attack in which at least 15 people were killed in the alleged Israeli shelling of a UN school.
The facility was sheltering some of the 100,000 Palestinians who have fled their homes during fighting.
Rights groups say about 80 percent of the casualties so far have been civilians, and the UN agency for children UNICEF said Friday that 192 children had been killed during the conflict.
The Israeli army on Saturday announced the death of two soldiers in Gaza fighting on Friday evening. It named one as Staff Sergeant Guy Boyland, 21, but did not give further details.
Three civilians have been killed inside Israel by rocket fire from Gaza, which continued Saturday morning before the truce, with three shot down by missile defences and one falling on open ground, the army said.
It said militants fired 60 rockets into southern Israel on Friday, with another 15 intercepted.
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