Palestinian factions reached a new Egyptian-mediated truce deal today in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said.
The officials said the ceasefire reached at daybreak would take effect at 11am (9am Irish time), when President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction and the Islamist Hamas movement were to pull their respective gunmen off of Gaza's streets.
But gunmen sparked new battles in the streets of Gaza City today, minutes before the new truce was to take effect.
Militants from both sides also continued to block major traffic arteries by erecting checkpoints at key intersections. A key motive behind the new truce was to permit 70,000 Gaza high school students to take their matriculation exams.
Earlier this morning, gunmen fired shots at the house of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. The attack on the house near Gaza City, apparently by Fatah, was the first time in a month of infighting that Mr Haniyeh was targeted.
Yesterday, Hamas militants kidnapped an officer in a Fatah-linked security force, took him to the roof of a 15-story apartment building and threw him off.
Elsewhere, Fatah militants surrounded the house of a Hamas mosque preacher and fired rocket-propelled grenades at the four-story building. They took the preacher, Mohammed al-Rifati, away, and his body was later brought to a hospital.
Just before midnight, a Hamas activist was thrown off the 12th floor of a building and killed, security officials said. Four other Hamas men in the building were shot and wounded, bringing the yesterday's toll to three dead and 36 wounded, medical officials said.
The latest fighting had been the worst since a ceasefire declared a month ago after a wave of violence killed more than 50 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them fighters.