Middle East, Cease-fire | featured news

Israel and Hamas have agreed to a cease-fire, the Egyptian foreign minister said Wednesday, ending eight days of fighting that killed more than 140 Palestinians and five Israelis. The cease-fire is set to start at 9 p.m. Cairo time (2 p.m. ET), Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr announced in a news conference alongside visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Hamas said a truce had been reached between Israel and Gaza, though Israel couched the news by saying an agreement was close but not a done deal. Hamas official Ayman Taha said the truce would go into effect early Wednesday, according to Reuters news service.

China on Thursday called for a phased-in cease-fire and negotiations on a gradual political transition to end the ongoing bloodshed in Syria. A four-point proposal issued by the Foreign Ministry stopped short of calling for the ouster of President Bashar Assad and omitted mention of any measures to compel compliance. Alongside Russia, China has steadfastly blocked any outside intervention that could force Assad from power, much to the consternation of the U.S. and other countries seeking a swift end to the 19-month-old conflict, which has killed more than 35,000 people.

Syrian jets bombarded Sunni Muslim regions in Damascus and around the country on Sunday, activists said, as President Bashar al-Assad kept up air strikes against rebels despite a U.N.-brokered truce that now appears to be in tatters.

Protests emerged onto the streets across Syria on Friday as a temporary cease-fire marking the most important Muslim holiday of the year largely held at the start of its first day.

Lakhdar Brahimi’s plan calls for guns to be silent on the main Muslim holiday of the year, but numerous do-it-yourself aspects of the plan immediately called into question whether it would quiet any fighting.

Despite efforts to implant a cease-fire, Syrian authorities said on Monday that attackers had fired anti-tank rockets at the office of the Central Bank in Damascus.

U.N.-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan has expressed dismay over reports that the Syrian government resumes brutal attacks on cities once U.N. monitors leave -- the latest sign that diplomatic efforts are failing to quash the bloodshed in the country.

International envoy Kofi Annan is expected to brief the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, as reports of carnage in Syria steadily increase despite the council's agreement to boost the number of monitors there.

U.N. ceasefire monitors visited the battered Syrian city of Homs and met its governor on Saturday, hours before the U.N. Security Council was to vote on a draft resolution to authorize the deployment to Syria of up to 300 unarmed military observers.