Palestinian fighters slipped into an Israeli village from the Gaza Strip and fought a gun battle with troops yesterday as an unofficial truce called for the Muslim Eid al-Fitr festival disintegrated.

The clash, in which Israeli television said five gunmen were killed and the Islamist Hamas movement said it had killed 10 Israeli soldiers, appeared to wreck international hopes of turning a brief lull in fighting into a longer-term ceasefire.

After the infiltration at Nahal Oz, a kibbutz collective village due east of Gaza City, the Israeli army warned thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes in areas around Gaza City. Such warnings usually precede retaliatory strikes.

Israel warns Gazans to evacuate after cross-border raid

As night fell over Gaza, army flares illuminated the sky and the sound of intense shelling could be heard. The incident was not the only breach of the fragile truce. Eight children and two adults were killed by a blast at a park in northern Gaza and four Israelis were reported to have been killed by cross-border Palestinian mortar fire.

Residents blamed the park explosion, which also wounded 40 adults, on an Israeli airstrike, but Israel said a misfiring rocket launched by Hamas militants had hit the public garden in the Beach refugee camp.

Israeli media said four Israelis were killed by a mortar round fired out of Gaza in a separate incident. The military declined immediate comment.

Israeli forces had said they were firing only when fired upon while army engineers hunted infiltrator tunnels from the Gaza Strip’s eastern frontier. They accused Palestinians of launching at least 17 rockets across the border.

A Palestinian woman embraces a girl at the scene of an explosion that medics said killed eight children and two adults and wounded 40 others at a public garden in Gaza City yesterday. Photos: Reuters

Gaza’s dominant Hamas Islamists had called for a pause in hostilities yesterday, the 21st day of their conflict with Israel, to coincide with Eid, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Israel initially balked, having abandoned its own offer to extend a 12-hour truce from Saturday as Palestinian rockets kept flying.

However, calm gradually descended through the night with just the occasional exchange of fire heard until a series of blasts shook Gaza in the afternoon.

Pools of blood lay on the ground in the Beach refugee camp garden in the aftermath of one of the blasts.

“We came out of the mosque when I saw the children playing with their toy guns. Seconds later a missile landed,” said Munther Al-Derbi, a resident of the camp.

At roughly the same time, another blast shook the grounds of Gaza’s main Shifa hospital, without causing any casualties.

Israel, which has previously accused Hamas fighters of hiding in the hospital, again blamed an errant militant missile.

Foreign pressure on Netanyahu mounted on Sunday, with both US President Barack Obama and the UN Security Council urging an immediate ceasefire that would allow relief to reach Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians, followed by negotiations on a more durable cessation of hostilities.

Israel wants guarantees Hamas will be stripped of its tunnels and rocket stocks. It worries the Palestinian Islamists will parlay the truce talks mediated by their friends in Qatar and Turkey into an easing of an Israeli-Egypt blockade on Gaza.

Speaking to UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon yesterday before news of the border infiltration was announced, Netanyahu accused the Security Council of siding with Hamas.

“The statement relates to the needs of a murderous terrorist group that attacks Israeli civilians, and has no answer for Israel’s security needs – among them a demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu said.