GAZA CITY, Jan 18: Israel began withdrawing troops from the Gaza Strip on Sunday as a fragile unilateral ceasefire came into effect after three weeks of attacks and atrocities which left over 1300 people dead.

As medics pulled at least 95 bodies from the mountains of rubble left by Israel’s offensive, Hamas said it would hold its fire for one week to allow Israeli troops to withdraw.

Egypt, meanwhile, hosted an international summit of European and Arab leaders aimed at shoring up the truce, while officials in Cairo held talks with Hamas with the same goal.

European leaders called on Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and on Hamas to stop firing rockets before heading to Jerusalem to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

And Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced plans to host an international conference to help rebuild Gaza.

“This fragile ceasefire has got to be followed immediately, if it is to be sustainable, by humanitarian access... by troop withdrawals, by an end to arms trafficking,” said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

After exchanges of gunfire and an air strike punctured what Olmert acknowledged was a “fragile” unilateral ceasefire, Gaza’s Hamas rulers and other armed groups announced their own one-week ceasefire.

“We in the Palestinian resistance movements announce a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and demand that enemy forces withdraw in a week and open all the border crossings to permit the entry of humanitarian aid and basic goods,” Mussa Abu Marzuk, the deputy leader of Hamas’s politburo, said in Damascus.

Dawud Shihab, a Gaza-based spokesman for Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed faction, said the truce would give an opportunity to Arab governments to put pressure on Israel to withdraw all its troops after the three-week blitz.

“During this period, the resistance is ready to respond to all efforts by the Egyptians, Turks, Syrians and Arabs,” he said.

The military confirmed troop withdrawals had begun after witnesses saw Israeli tanks and troops pull back from key positions in and around Gaza City towards the border fence which surrounds the impoverished territory.

After the ceasefire came into effect at 0000 GMT, Gaza enjoyed its first bomb-free night in more than three weeks.

Hamas fired 18 rockets at southern Israel on Sunday after the ceasefire Olmert declared went into effect at 2 a.m. (0000 GMT). Israel responded with two air strikes against launching sites and medical workers said a Palestinian civilian was killed.

Despite those breaches, the United States welcomed the ceasefire and the United Nations expressed its relief.

“The goal remains a durable and fully respected ceasefire that will lead to stabilisation and normalisation in Gaza,” said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

A spokeswoman for President-elect Barack Obama said he welcomed the truce and would say more about the situation in Gaza after he is inaugurated on Tuesday.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon welcomed the Israeli move and called on Hamas to stop its rocket fire.

“Urgent humanitarian access for the people of Gaza is the immediate priority,” he said.British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on Israel to follow up its withdrawal of troops from the Gaza Strip by opening the crossings into the Palestinian territory.

“I hope that that will be possible and also that we will see an opening of the crossings,” the British premier told a news conference.

Iran, which has supplied rockets to Hamas, said a key to calm is the opening of border crossings that Israel and Egypt have kept virtually sealed since Hamas staged a violent takeover of Gaza in 2007.

The comment by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was a reminder that the tiny coastal territory of Gaza is just one piece of a larger conflict between Israel and regional enemies.

He said Israel’s unilateral ceasefire in the Gaza Strip was a sign of its defeat.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Western powers had failed to intervene promptly to stop the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, calling their attitude a “double standard”.

In a speech in Belgium, aired live on Turkish television, Mr Erdogan recalled the conflict between Georgia and Russia in August, charging that Western powers failed to engage as promptly to stop Israel’s devastating offensive in Gaza.

“The attention shown for Georgia was unfortunately not shown for Gaza...

The United States did not show it and Western (European) countries did not show it,” he said.

“Why is this double standard? Why is this indifference, this insensitivity?” he asked.

Mr Erdogan also slammed Israel for describing its offensive, which claimed more than 1,300 lives, about a third of them children, as a success when it decided to unilaterally halt the operation early on Sunday.

“We regret that they say they had accomplished what they wanted,” Mr Erdogan said. “Children were killed. Defenceless people were killed. Is this what you have accomplished?”

In Gaza City, the Shahadeh family was loading mattresses into the trunk of a car in Gaza City, preparing to return home to the hard-hit northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.

“I’ve been told that the devils have left,” said Riyadh Shahadeh, referring to the Israelis. “I’m going back to see how I’m going to start again. I don’t know what happened to my house. ... I am going back there with a heart full of fear because I am not sure if the area is secure or not, but I have no other option.”

In southern Israel, residents who have endured rocket attacks for eight years accused the government of stopping the offensive too soon.

Schools in southern Israel had remained closed in anticipation of the rocket attacks.

Shortly before the rocket attacks resumed, the head of a parents association in the town of Sderot faulted the government for not reaching an agreement directly with Hamas.

“It’s an offensive that ended without achieving its aims,” Batya Katar said.

Meanwhile, Egypt’s foreign minister dismissed a US-Israeli agreement aimed at cutting off weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip, raising questions about how effective it would be in preventing arms from reaching Hamas.

The deal signed in Washington on Friday helped pave the way for Israeli leaders to approve an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on Saturday, since an effective system to end arms smuggling in Gaza was a key goal of the three-week-old Israeli offensive in the territory.

But Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said that his country would not be bound by the agreement. Egypt’s cooperation will be critical to prevent arms getting into Gaza since most of the smuggling is believed to occur through tunnels underneath the Egyptian border.—Agencies