Gaza crisis: Palestinians killed after ceasefire begins - live updates

Fishermen in Gaza City set out to sea for the first time since the war began as inhabitants tentatively left their homes, some for the first time for days. Queues formed for taxis. Most of those immediately on the streets were hoping to return to homes they had not seen for weeks, or salvage belongings. Grocery shops rapidly opened, selling basic foodstuffs.

While most seemed optimistic and pleased that the ceasfire had been declared others remained defiant. Rocket fire from Hamas also continued until the ceasefire came into effect.

Samira Attar, 27, a housewife, sitting in a donkey cart with her husband and five children and three mattresses, said she was heading back to her house in Atattraa, in the north of the strip.

“I am going back to my house for the first time for 17 days. I hope this ceasefire will hold for the whole 72 hours and longer, God willing. We don’t need more bloodshed, or more devastation. I’d like to see Israel to be defeated and broken but the circumstances were very difficult,” Attar said.

Harth Nassr, 34, a restaurant worker from Beit Hanoun, a heavily-hit village in the north east of the Gaza Strip, said he too was optimistic. “I think it will hold this time. Everybody is tired of this war,” he said.

Nassr’s home was destroyed after he evacuated following a warning from Israeli forces to leave the area.

“I left my house ten days ago. I went there only once in the last ten days and found the whole building, all three storeys, destroyed. I’m going back today to see if I can get any of my belongings.”

However, others doubted that the war, in which 59 Israelis and more than 1,440 Palestinians, largely civilians, have died, was over.

Isham Abu Ramadan, 42, said he was not optimistic: “We have long experience of Israel. They break the ceasefire all the time. They want to hit us more. They want more massacres.

“Israel doesn’t want to end the war as well as they don’t want a peace settlement. I don’t want a ceasefire. I want the resistance to fire until the end when Israel is defeated and asks for a truce,” Ramadan, a construction worker who said his house was destroyed in an air strike earlier this month, told the Guardian.