Israel and factions in the Gaza Strip have agreed to an Egyptian-mediated truce to end four days of cross-border violence, a senior Egyptian security official has said.

The official told Reuters news agency on Tuesday that both sides "agreed to end the current operations" including an unusual undertaking by Israel to "stop assassinations" in a deal expected to take effect at 1am local time (2300 GMT Monday).

There was no immediate comment by Israel or the Palestinian factions regarding the deal. Previous such deals have often got off to shaky starts.

Israeli media quoted officials as reiterating the longstanding policy that Israel would "answer quiet with quiet" but stopped short of providing any guarantees to withhold fire in response to rocket attacks. An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment.

Gaza's Hamas leadership, whose own cadres have kept out of the fighting, had confirmed on Sunday that Egypt was working on a deal to stop the violence.

Death toll

Israeli air attacks on Gaza killed seven more people on Monday, taking the death toll to 25 in hostilities that erupted on Friday, Palestinian medical sources said.

Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian faction, said two of the dead were members of its military wing, the al-Quds Brigades.

Israel has said it is hitting back at scores of rocket attacks, with more than 40 fired on Monday alone.

In a strike on the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, a 65-year-old man and his daughter were killed.

Medics also reported at six air raids in the early hours of Monday that injured 35 people, and another two raids around the city of Khan Younis, which left two dead and two others wounded.

Medics said another strike killed a 15-year-old boy and injured six other students near a school in northern Gaza.

Al Jazeera's Paul Brennan, reporting from Gaza City, earlier quoted Islamic Jihad sources as saying that the Egyptians, at the behest of Hamas, were trying to establish an informal truce.

However, our correspondent said, "Islamic Jihad is very reluctant to abide by that at the moment ... They are extremely unhappy that the Israelis are pursuing what they call an ‘assassination policy'."

He said the group would likely reject any deal "unless they can get a guarantee from Israel that those assassination attacks will stop, and frankly I don’t think that guarantee is going to come."

Eighteen of the Palestinians killed since Friday were identified by medical officials as fighters and five as civilians. At least 74 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and three Israelis have been wounded.

"Sometimes there is collateral damage, and of course Israel is sorry about that," Efraim Inbar, a defense analyst, said.

"Over the years we have perfected techniques, but it's a war. And if we are hit then we have to hit back ... No country in the world would accept missiles being shot at its citizens."

Al Jazeera's Cal Perry, reporting from a hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, said, "The main issue that people here are talking about is civilian casualties ... and they are asking if Hamas' military wing will get involved, with weapons far strong than those that Islamic Jihad is using."

The Palestinians and Israelis have made rival calls for the UN Security Council to act as the international Quartet on the Middle East - the US, Russia, EU and UN - holds its first top-level meeting in six months on Monday.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the UN, said the Security Council must "act with urgency to address this crisis", accusing Israel of staging an "escalation of deadly violence and terror".

Mansour said that if Israel was not held accountable "this will only ensure the bolstering of its impunity and the further escalation of its crimes against the Palestinian people, with far-reaching consequences for the future of our people and the prospects for peace and stability to ever be realized".

In return, Israel criticized the international community's "silence" over rocket attacks from Gaza, and said in a letter to the Security Council that it would take "all necessary measures" to protect civilians against the renewed barrage.

PHOTO CAPTION
Israeli police engineers look at a camera as they examine the site after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip hit the city of Ashdod, southern Israel, Monday, March 12, 2012.

Aljazeera