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GAZA CITY - Palestinian factions met Friday evening to discuss a proposal by president Mahmud Abbas for a truce with Israel as warplanes pounded the Gaza Strip for a ninth straight day, a Hamas source said.
"This mutual truce would be observed at first for one month in the Gaza Strip, then afterwards in the West Bank," said Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha. He added that his organisation was going to "study the proposal."
Abbas on Thursday called for militants in the Gaza Strip to halt rocket fire against Israel and for a truce to be reached with the Jewish state. He has been in Gaza since Tuesday in a bid to bring an end to the violence.
Forty Palestinians, including 13 civilians and 27 combatants, have been killed since May 16 in Israeli air raids in the Gaza Strip in response to rockets being fired into the south of Israel.
Around 140 rockets have slammed into Israel over the past week and a half, killing the woman and wounding 19 people.
Palestinian groups participating in Friday's meeting included Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Discussions between Hamas and Fatah were to take place next week in Cairo with the aim of shoring up a fragile ceasefire designed to end recent clashes between those two groups, Taha said.
Supporters of Hamas and Fatah, which share power in the Palestinian government, clashed for several days in the Gaza Strip before reaching a ceasefire on May 16. The clashes resulted in more than 40 deaths in less than one week.
- AFP /ls
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