Hedaya al-Saeedi
25 March 2019•Update: 26 March 2019
GAZA CITY, Palestine
Egypt has managed to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza-based resistance factions, a Hamas official said late Monday.
“Egyptian efforts to secure a ceasefire between the [Israeli] occupation forces and resistance factions have met with success,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Gaza’s Sout Al-Aqsa radio station.
According to Barhoum, the ceasefire went into effect at 10:00 p.m. local time (20:00 GMT).
In a statement, Salama Marouf, head of the Gaza government's media office, said that state institutions were “functioning normally” despite a fresh round of Israeli airstrikes earlier Monday.
Neither Israel nor Egypt have yet to officially confirm the reported ceasefire arrangement.
On Monday morning, rocket-fire emanating from Gaza reportedly left seven Israelis injured.
Israel responded by pounding Hamas positions across the Gaza Strip, to which Palestinian resistance factions responded in turn by firing rockets at two Israeli cities located near the Hamas-run coastal enclave.
The Israeli army has reportedly deployed missile-defense batteries in several locations across the country, while sending two additional infantry brigades to the fraught Gaza-Israel buffer zone.
*Writing by Mahmoud Barakat
