Israel and the Hamas militant group reached a cease-fire agreement Wednesday to end eight days of the fiercest fighting in nearly four years, promising to halt attacks on each other and ease an Israel

An Israeli air strike killed three Palestinians in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday, medics said, with Palestinian security sources confirming they were Hamas militants.

Gaza's Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya has postponed until next week a Cairo trip for top-level talks with his Egyptian counterpart Hisham Qandil, a spokesman said on Thursday.

Haniya had been sch

Israel launched fresh air strikes on the Gaza Strip overnight after killing two people in earlier raids, the Palestinian health ministry said on Saturday.

The latest strikes targeted two camps of the

Israel and militants in Gaza began observing an Egyptian-brokered truce on Tuesday after four days of violence, which officials on both sides warned could flare up again.

The ceasefire was holding af

Hamas 'will never recognise Israel', its Gaza prime minister said on Saturday in a speech in Iran that is likely to complicate Palestinian efforts to form a unity government in the teeth of opposition

Israeli troops on Sunday arrested 120 Hamas members in the southern West Bank just hours after the faction's Gaza branch fired rockets into Israel, Palestinian security sources said.

Palestinian secu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to convince his British counterpart David Cameron on Wednesday that a deal between the two Palestinian factions would be disastrous for West Asia peace.

Ismail Haniya, the head of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, on Monday condemned the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a US raid in Pakistan.

Hamas has no intention of pressing Fatah to halt peace talks with Israel following a unity deal between the two factions, a senior leader in the Islamist movement told AFP on Thursday.