Hamas accuses Israel of 'backtracking' on truce talks

A Palestinian boy carries an old door amid the rubble of a destroyed workshop following an Israeli airstrike on Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday. Six people were wounded when two Israeli airstrikes hit targets in the northern Gaza Strip. Photo: AFP

The Islamist Hamas movement accused Israel on Saturday of "backtracking" on Egyptian-brokered truce talks by demanding an open-ended agreement and stepping up attacks on the group's Gaza enclave.
"The shelling and escalation has coincided with a backtracking in the Zionist position related to the length of the truce," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement.
"(Israel) has demanded a long-term, open-ended truce and not an 18-month truce as had been (previously) established," he said.
The two sides have been struggling to reach a formal truce in the wake of a devastating three-week war that killed some 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis before it was halted by separate ceasefires on January 18.
At the same time Palestinian militants have fired more than 40 rockets and mortar rounds at southern Israel and the Jewish state has carried out several air strikes targeting suspected militants, arms caches and smuggling tunnels.
On Saturday, the Israeli army said a longer-range Grad-style rocket fired by Gaza militants had evaded its early warning system and struck the seaside town of Ashdod, 38 kilometres (23 miles) north of Gaza.
The rocket was believed to have been fired on Friday evening, as militants launched shorter-range rockets and a mortar round, prompting a series of Israeli air strikes that killed one militant and wounded nine other people.
Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal told AFP on Friday that the talks had encountered a "complication" that could prevent the planned announcement of a truce on Sunday but did not elaborate on the problem.
Israel has not commented on the truce talks, and last week held general elections in which right-wing parties -- which have vowed tough action against Hamas in Gaza -- made major gains.
The Islamist group -- which won 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections but remains blacklisted as a terror group in the West -- seized power in Gaza in June 2007 after routing forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.