A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip held yesterday as Egyptian mediators pressed on with talks with the two sides on securing longer-term calm, officials said. 

The ceasefire began before dawn on Friday, and Palestinians and Israelis are now assessing the damage from 11 days of hostilities in which Israel pounded Gaza with air strikes and militants fired barrages of rockets at Israel.

Palestinian officials put the reconstruction costs at tens of millions of dollars and medical officials said 248 people, including 66 children, had been killed in Gaza. The devastation has raised concerns about the humanitarian situation in the densely populated enclave. Palestinian attacks killed at least 13 people in Israel.

A source familiar with planning said US Secretary of State would visit Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday and Thursday, hoping to build on the ceasefire mediated by Egypt with US support.

Egypt sent a delegation to Israel on Friday to discuss ways of firming up the ceasefire, including with aid for Palestinians in Gaza, Hamas officials told Reuters.

The delegates have since been shuttling between Israel and Gaza, with talks continuing yesterday, the officials said.

Despite confrontations between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters at a Jerusalem holy site on Friday, there were no reports of Hamas rocket launches from Gaza or Israeli military strikes on the enclave as of yesterday morning.

US President Joe Biden said on Thursday that Washington would work with the United Nations on bringing humanitarian and reconstruction assistance to Gaza, with safeguards against funds being used to arm Hamas, which the West deems a terrorist group.

Besides reiterating his pledge to help organize efforts to rebuild Gaza, he on Friday said creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel is the "only answer" to the conflict.

Biden also said he had told the Israelis to stop "intercommunal fighting" in the flashpoint city of Jerusalem.

But he expressed his commitment to Israel once again. "There is no shift in my commitment to the security of Israel, period, no shift, not at all," he said.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called on Muslim states to support Palestinians militarily and financially and help rebuild Gaza, Iranian media reported.

Saudi Arabia's King Salman condemned what he called Israeli aggression in Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip during a phone call on Friday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Palestinian officials on Friday said it would cost $100m to rebuild the damage to industry, power and agriculture in the already impoverished territory struggling under a devastating 14-year blockade.

"People are still out on the streets trying to resume something approaching what was, even for Gaza, normal life before all of this took place," Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett, reporting from Gaza City, said yesterday. "But everywhere you go around here you see the evidence of what has taken place in the last few days," he added, standing in front a row of bombed-out buildings.

As major power infrastructures were hit, Gazans were now receiving 5 hours of electricity per day. Before the bombardment, they used to get 12 hours.

Gaza's 13 hospitals are very much under pressure not just from the sheer volume of patients but also shortage in fuel supply too.

World Health Organization spokeswoman Margaret Harris said on Friday Gaza's health facilities were in danger of being overwhelmed by the thousands of injuries, and called for immediate access into Gaza for health supplies and personnel.

Meanwhile, convoys of trucks carrying aid began passing into Gaza through the Karem Abu Salem or Kerem Shalom crossing after it was reopened by Israel, bringing much-needed medicine, food and fuel. The United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund said it had released $18.5 million for humanitarian efforts.

One of the most densely populated places on Earth, Gaza has for years been subjected to an Israeli blockade that restricts the passage of people and goods, as well as restrictions by Egypt.

Sources said about 1,000 individual homes have been completely destroyed, 700 have been severely damaged, and another 14,000 home units have been partially damaged. As a result, nearly 80,000 people have become homeless in Gaza.

"It will take years to rebuild – and even more to rebuild the fractured lives," said Fabrizio Carboni, regional director of the International Committee of the Red Cross.