Netanyahu kills another child: an 8-year-old girl.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) Palestinians and Israelis accused each other of breaking a seven-hour ceasefire intended to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, shortly after it came into effect on Monday.

Palestinians said Israel had bombed a refugee camp in Gaza City, killing an eight-year-old girl and wounding 29 others, while Israel said at least four rockets had been fired into its territory from Gaza.

Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said the airstrike on a house in the Shati camp occurred after the truce began on Monday morning (local time).

An Israeli military spokeswoman said they were investigating what happened in the refugee camp. According to her, four rockets had been fired from Gaza since the start of the truce, two of which detonated inside Israel. There are no reports of deaths or damage.

In Jerusalem, a heavy construction vehicle crashed into a bus, in an incident that Israeli police said was a Palestinian attack. There were no passengers on the bus, but a pedestrian died after being run over by the vehicle. Police said they shot and killed the driver, who, according to Israeli media, was identified as a Palestinian living in East Jerusalem.

Israel announced a humanitarian ceasefire to allow some of the hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to return home after nearly four weeks of war.

The announcement was met with suspicion by the Islamist movement Hamas, which controls Gaza, and came after an unusually harsh rebuke from the US over an apparent Israeli attack on Sunday at a UN school that left 10 people dead.

An Israeli defense official said the ceasefire would apply everywhere except in areas south of the city of Rafah, where ground forces intensified their offensive after three soldiers were killed in a Hamas ambush on Friday.

"If the truce is broken, the military forces will return fire for the declared duration of the truce," the official said.

MEDIA MANEUVER

Hamas, which sent representatives to Egypt for truce negotiations, said that Israel's attack after the ceasefire began shows that the truce was a media stunt.

"We ask that people continue to be careful," said spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.

Israel is scaling back its offensive despite the absence of an agreement with Hamas. According to Israel, the army has completed its main objective of the ground operation: the destruction of tunnels used to invade Israeli territory.

In an air strike in the early morning, Israel killed Danyal Mansour, a senior commander of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group fighting with Hamas.

Israel launched its offensive on July 8 following an increase in rocket fire from Hamas. The conflict then escalated into a ground invasion of Gaza.

Gaza authorities say 1.804 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed and more than 25 percent of the region's 1,8 million residents have been left homeless, with more than 3.000 Palestinian homes destroyed or damaged.

Palestinians use brief truce to see what's left of their homes.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Glass and rubble littered the streets outside Ahed Marouf's home in northern Gaza on Monday as he drove a cart carrying his wife and three children to see their family home during a seven-hour truce declared by Israel.

What they saw when they arrived in Beit Lahiya, near the Israeli border, caused them to return to temporary shelter in a UN-run school in the Jabalya refugee camp.

"I don't feel safe," said Marout, a 30-year-old farmer. "In our house, the windows were shattered. There's no electricity or water."

Along with thousands of other residents of the region, Marouf and his family fled Beit Lahiya during the intense fighting last week between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants.

Israel carried out air and ground strikes, while militants fired dozens of mortar rounds.

Israel said the brief truce on Monday was intended to allow hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced for nearly a month by the conflict to return home. The Islamist group Hamas, which controls Gaza, said the unilateral truce was a public relations stunt by Israel.

On the main access road to Beit Lahiya, a block of large apartment buildings where hundreds of low-income families lived appeared to have been hit by tank fire, with damage too extensive to repair.

"Only a permanent ceasefire from both sides would persuade us to return home and stay. For now, we remain at the UN school," said Marouf's wife, Mervat, 23.

She complained that she cannot treat her children's flu and stomach aches in local hospitals because they are overcrowded with people injured by Israeli bombings.

In Gaza City, dozens of people were queuing in front of banks and ATMs to withdraw money.

Others crowded into markets during the ceasefire, which, according to Palestinians, was violated by Israel with a bomb attack that killed an eight-year-old girl and injured 29 others in a Gaza refugee camp.

"Destruction is taking over Gaza," Mervat said. "We came with our sorrow. We return with that sorrow as well."