Fighting rang out across Gaza this afternoon immediately after the end of a three hour ceasefire to allow food and medical aid into the Palestinian territory.

Diplomatic efforts to end the violence continued, with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France claiming to have brokered a ceasefire agreement with Jerusalem.

Hamas and Israel have both said they will consider the Franco-Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire in the bloody violence in the Gaza Strip. Jerusalem however rejected a claim by Mr Sarkozy that Israel had accepted the truce deal.

A spokesman for the French President said that he “strongly welcomes the acceptance by Israel and the Palestinian Authority of the French-Egyptian plan presented yesterday”. He made no mention of Hamas, which controls Gaza.

After a meeting of the security cabinet this afternoon, Israeli officials said that they would send a delegation to Egypt in the coming days in order to discuss a truce proposal put to them by President Mubarak last night.

A spokesman said: “Israel thanks the Egyptian president and the French president for their efforts to advance the solution to end the terrorist activity from Gaza and stop weapons smuggling from Egypt into Gaza. Israel sees positively the dialogue between Egyptians and Israelis in order to advance these issues.”

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, also said he would go to Egypt for the talks.

Precise details of the proposal were unclear but it is believed to be based on installing an international force to prevent the smuggling of weapons from Egypt into Gaza while simultaneously opening border crossings into the territory.

Meanwhile Israel was coming under increasing international pressure to halt its bombardment of Gaza.

The UN said that it was 99.9 per cent certain that a UN-run school where it had allowed ordinary Gazans to take refuge from the fighting that was hit by Israeli Army fire yesterday, killing 43 women and children, was not harbouring militants.

An army spokesman had claimed that Israel fired at the UN school because militants had fired at them first from its grounds.

The International Red Cross announced today that one of its paramedics was killed and two more were wounded when Israeli tank fire struck their ambulance over the weekend, ramping up the pressure on Israel over the escalating death toll. Around 205 of the more than 600 dead in Gaza are children, according to Palestinian officials.

Fighting resumed immediately after Israel for the first time permitted a three-hour lull to allow aid groups to start moving desperately-needed food and medicines into the blockaded territory.

“The idea is for the Israeli military to lay down its weapons every day from 1pm to 4pm, starting today, in the area of the city of Gaza,” an Israeli military source said.

Gaza residents took advantage of the lull in to rush into the streets and stock up on supplies. Cars and pedestrians returned to the roads of Gaza City after Israel halted bombardment to allow humanitarian supplies into the beleaguered territory.

Queues formed outside bakeries and grocery shops which reopened for the first time since Israel sent ground troops into Gaza late on Saturday after a week of aerial and naval attacks. Others rushed to hospitals to visit injured relatives or search for loved ones.

“As soon as the three-hour truce was announced, people took advantage of the calm to go out in the street to buy food,” said one Gaza resident, who asked that her name not be used. “But the stores are empty,” she said.

“Three hours is not enough,” said Mohammad Azzan, 45. “We don’t have water, we don’t have electricity, we don’t have food.”

Ordnance was widely reported in Gaza soon after 4pm, while the Israeli media reported that two Hamas rockets landed in the Israeli desert town of Beersheba. The city is 20 miles west of the nuclear plant of Dimona. There were no casualties or damage caused. .

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