BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hamas resumed rocket fire Saturday on Israel after rejecting Israel's offer to extend a humanitarian cease-fire, the latest setback in international efforts to negotiate an end to the Gaza war.

Despite the Hamas rejection, Israel's Cabinet decided to extend a truce for 24 hours, until midnight (2100 GMT) Sunday. However, it warned that its military would respond to any fire from Gaza and would continue to demolish Hamas military tunnels during this period.

The temporary lull on Saturday saw Palestinians return to neighborhoods reduced to rubble and allowed medics to collect close to 150 bodies, Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra said.

With the retrieval of the corpses, the number of Palestinians killed reached 1,047 in 19 days of fighting, while more than 6,000 were wounded, he said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and European foreign ministers, meeting in Paris, had hoped to transform the cease-fire into a more sustainable truce. That effort was thrown into doubt with the Hamas' rejection of the extension.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said any truce must include a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and that tens of thousands of displaced people must be allowed to return to their homes. Israel's current terms are "not acceptable," he said in a text message to journalists.

Raw: Residents Come Home to Rubble in GazaPlay Video

In the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, scores of homes had been pulverized, wreckage blocked roads and power cables dangled in the streets. Hardest hit were areas close to the border with Israel, areas from where Gaza militants typically fire rockets.

Manal Kefarneh, 30, wept as she inspected her damaged home.

On an unfinished top floor, she and her husband had been raising chickens. The couple collected the dead and replenished water for the living in hopes they will survive the war.

"What did we do to deserve this?" she asked. "All of the Arab leaders watch what's going on here like it's a Bollywood film."

Israeli strikes have destroyed hundreds of homes, including close to 500 in targeted hits, and forced tens of thousands of people to flee, according to Palestinian rights groups.

Kerry Lays Out Ceasefire Goals for GazaPlay Video

Across Gaza, 147 bodies were pulled from the rubble Saturday, officials said. In southern Gaza, a tank shell killed 20 members of an extended family who sought refuge inside a building, al-Kidra said.

Israel says it is doing its utmost to prevent civilian casualties, including sending evacuation warnings to residents in targeted areas, and blames Hamas for putting civilians in harm's way.

Israel has lost 42 soldiers and two civilians, and a Thai worker has been killed.

Israeli legislator Ofer Shelah of the centrist Yesh Atid party said Israeli troops are "fighting with an enemy dug in within the civilian population, dug in underground or within the houses there." Referring to the widespread destruction, he said that "those are the consequences of such a fight."

The military took some Israeli journalists into the Gaza border areas where troops were operating. Footage broadcast on Israeli television station Channel 10 showed homes booby-trapped with explosives, as well as grenades, mines and rockets stored there. Tunnels opened up inside houses.

12-hour Cease-fire in Gaza Fighting BeginsPlay Video

Soldiers said some buildings blew up after being hit by gunfire from all the explosives inside. Col. Ofer Vinter, head of the Givati infantry brigade, said almost every house was booby-trapped with explosives and that Gaza fighters "emerge from the ground all the time."

Standing over a tunnel concealed in a house, he said: "We cannot leave here before we finish dealing with all the tunnels."

Israel launched a major air campaign in Gaza on July 8 and later sent ground troops into the Hamas-ruled territory in an operation it said was aimed at halting Palestinian rocket fire and destroying cross-border tunnels it views as a threat.

Shelah, the legislator, said about 50 tunnels have been discovered so far.

On Friday, Israel rejected a Kerry proposal for a weeklong truce because it had no provisions for the Israeli military continuing to demolish tunnels, Israeli media reported at the time.

Raw: Palestinians and Israeli Soldiers ClashPlay Video

Under the Kerry proposal, talks would begin during the temporary truce on easing the border blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza.

Hamas has said it would not halt fire until it wins guarantees that the border blockade, enforced by Israel and Egypt, would be lifted.

Any new border arrangements for Gaza would likely give a role to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the main political rival of Hamas. Hamas had seized Gaza from Abbas in 2007, triggering the Gaza blockade by Israel and Egypt.

However, Abbas, who heads the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, reached a power-sharing deal earlier this year with Hamas. Under the deal, a government of technocrats headed by Abbas was to prepare for new elections in the West Bank and Gaza.

Egypt wants forces loyal to Abbas to be posted on the Gaza side of the mutual border before considering opening the Rafah crossing there, Gaza's main gate to the world. Hamas officials have said they do not oppose such an arrangement, but would not surrender control over its thousands-strong security forces, meaning Hamas would remain the de facto power in Gaza.

View gallery

A Palestinian woman carries her belongings past the rubble of houses destroyed by Israeli strikes in …

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in Paris on Saturday that he and his counterparts from other nations are calling on both sides to negotiate a sustainable cease-fire.

Such a truce should meet Israeli security concerns, but also "the Palestinians' expectations in terms of economic development and access to Gaza," he said. "We are convinced of the need to involve the Palestinian Authority in achieving these objectives."

Israel initially decided to extend Saturday's 12-hour truce by four hours, to midnight (2100 GMT) Saturday. Hamas swiftly rejected the idea of an extension.

Shortly after the Hamas announcement, Gaza militants fired eight rockets and three mortars at Israel, the military said. Gaza militants said they fired 42 rockets, including two that were aimed at Tel Aviv, Israel's second largest city, where police dispersed a peace rally attended by several thousand people.

In Gaza, a 36-year-old Palestinian man was killed by a sniper near the central Gaza town of Deir el-Balah shortly after the 12-hour truce ended.

View gallery

Palestinian Mukaram Keferna cries upon her return to what was the family house, destroyed by Israeli …

Meanwhile, anger over Israel's Gaza operation has sparked a series of protests in the West Bank. Since Thursday, nine Palestinians have been killed in clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian protesters.

Among those were two Palestinians killed by army fire Saturday, including a 23-year-old in the town of Jenin and a 16-year-old near the town of Bethlehem, hospital officials said.

___

Deitch reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Yousur Alhlou in Jerusalem and Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Karin Laub on Twitter at www.twitter.com/karin_laub.

Russia blasts EU sanctions, blames U.S.

Moscow says U.S has contributed to the Ukraine conflict by its support for Kiev's pro-Western government.

'Slander campaign'

By Michel Rose

PARIS (Reuters) - Pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with police in central Paris on Saturday when thousands of marchers defied a ban by French authorities to rally against Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip.

French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve warned organizers in a television address that they would be held responsible for any clashes and could be prosecuted for ignoring a ban that was confirmed by the country's top administrative court.

TV footage showed a minority of demonstrators wearing balaclavas and traditional Arab keffiyeh headdresses throwing projectiles at riot officers after two hours of peaceful protest.

By 1700 GMT (13:00 EST), most demonstrators had been evacuated from the square and order restored. Paris police said they had made about 50 arrests.

French authorities have refused to permit several pro-Palestinian protests because they feared violence. Marchers clashed with riot police in and around Paris in recent weeks, with some targeting synagogues and Jewish shops.

"Anti-Semitic violence exists: we must face it head on," Cazeneuve said.

Some protesters, NGOs and even ruling Socialist politicians have criticized the bans on the rallies as counter-productive.

Cazeneuve noted that over the last two weeks, five marches had been banned, out of about 300 such protests across the country.

"Freedom of protest was thus the rule, and bans the exception," he said.

According to the interior ministry, some 2,000 police were sent to the Place de la Republique to surround the demonstrators, which numbered about 5,000.

Reuters photographers saw one police officer slightly injured, the front windows of the Crowne Plaza hotel smashed and a bus shelter wrecked.

PALESTINIAN FLAGS

Organizers denied accusations of anti-Semitism.

"Our goal is not to attack the Jews, it is to condemn the policies of a government," Tarek Ben Hiba, a local politician and head of one of the 20 associations organizing the protest told Reuters.

Protesters were seen waiving Palestinian flags, chanting "We are all Palestinians" and carrying placards reading: "Zionists, terrorists". At least one Israeli flag was burned, a Reuters photographer said.

"It's a scandal that they're banning protests. It's our right. We were attacked with tear gas even though we didn't do anything," said 24-year old temp worker Sabrina, who declined to give her full name.

In the Mediterranean port city of Marseilles, some 2,000 people marched peacefully on Saturday in an authorized demonstration.

France has both the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in Europe and flare-ups in the Middle East have often in the past added to tensions between the two communities.

Israel began its offensive earlier this month, citing a surge in rocket attacks launched from Hamas militants in the Gaza strip.

Israel will extend a humanitarian truce in Gaza by a further four hours, a government source said on Saturday, as the number of Palestinian deaths in the 19-day war topped 1,000.

(Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry, Benoit Tessier, Gonzalo Fuentes and Ingrid Melander in Paris, Francois Revilla in Marseilles; Writing by Michel Rose; Editing by Toby Chopra)

France protestors: 'We are all Palestinians'

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators clash with police in Paris, defying a ban to rally against Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Anti-Semitic?

BEIRUT (AP) — A car bomb exploded in a northern Syrian town near the Turkish border Saturday, killing and wounding a number of people hours after Syrian rebels shot down a helicopter gunship over a slum in the northern city of Aleppo, activists said.

The Aleppo Media Center said the car bomb exploded in a vegetable market in the town of Azaz near the border with Turkey. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the car blew up near a gas station. The Observatory said the blast killed at least four people and wounded several others while the AMC said it killed and wounded a number of people but had no immediate figures.

Car bombs have claimed the lives of hundreds of people since the Syrian uprising began three years ago. The government and the opposition have traded blame for the deadly attacks.

Earlier in the day, the Observatory said the helicopter was shot down with a missile Friday night over a poor area of town known as Camp Nairab. Camp Nairab is adjacent to the Nairab military airport southeast of the city, where aircraft take off to carry out attacks in northern Syria.

Helicopters are used by President Bashar Assad's forces to drop barrel bombs — crude explosives that have killed thousands of people and caused widespread destruction, especially in Aleppo.

Rebels have rarely succeeded in downing helicopters, and have long requested anti-aircraft weapons from Western and Arab nations. The United States and its allies have refused, fearing that such weapons could fall into the hands of extremists, who could use them to target passenger planes.

The Observatory and an Aleppo-based activist who goes by the name Abu Saeed Izzedine said the helicopter crash killed four people, including a child. The Observatory said three of the dead were the helicopter's crew members.

Aleppo, once Syria's commercial capital, has seen heavy fighting since rebels seized part of the city in 2012.

The Observatory also reported Saturday that the number of soldiers killed over the past few days in a northern military base that was overrun by the extremist Islamic State group has risen to 85. It said the fate of 200 other soldiers is still unknown.

The monitoring group, which relies on a network of activists inside the country, said Islamic State fighters have executed and paraded the bodies of "tens" of soldiers in the northern city of Raqqa, the only provincial capital out of government control.

Amateur videos posted online by activists showed more than a dozen beheaded bodies in a busy square said to be in Raqqa. Some of the heads were placed on a nearby fence, where at least two headless bodies were crucified.

The video appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting of the events.

On social media sites that support the Islamic State group, activists posted photographs from inside the military base known as Division 17 showing fighters in control of several tanks, trucks and ammunition boxes.

Syria's uprising began in the form of peaceful Arab Spring-inspired protests in March 2011 but escalated into an armed revolt when government forces launched a sweeping crackdown on dissent. The country is now in the grip of a complex civil war in which myriad armed groups, including Islamic extremists, are fighting government forces and rival rebels.

Syria's conflict has killed at least 170,000 people, nearly a third of them civilians, according to activists. Nearly three million Syrians have fled the country.

Damascus (AFP) - Islamic State fighters have seized a Syrian army base in the northern province of Raqa, killing scores of troops and beheading some of them, a monitoring group said Saturday.

But in the central Homs region, government forces recaptured Al-Shaar gas field, seized by IS a week before, the monitor and Syria's army said.

The jihadist takeover of the base of Division 17 came as the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria said IS fighters accused of atrocities would be added to a list of war crimes indictees.

In the two-day assault on the base in Raqa province, an IS bastion, the jihadists killed at least 85 soldiers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

More than 50 troops were summarily executed, 19 others were killed in a double suicide bombing and at least 16 more died in the assault launched early Thursday.

Hundreds of troops "withdrew on Friday to safe places -- either to nearby villages whose residents oppose IS or to nearby Brigade 93 -- but the fate of some 200 remains unknown," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

"Some of the executed troops were beheaded, and their bodies and severed heads put on display in Raqa city," an IS stronghold, he told AFP.

View gallery

Rebel fighters prepare to execute two men, on July 25, 2014, in Binnish, near Idlib, in Syria (AFP P …

Video taken by jihadists and distributed on YouTube showed IS fighters apparently inside Division 17 living quarters burning a portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The jihadists also posted photographs online of the bodies of decapitated soldiers strewn across the ground.

- Headless bodies -

In one, six bloodied heads were lined up together on the ground, and other pictures showed headless bodies, mostly wearing combat fatigues.

Abdel Rahman said IS intended the display as "a message to the people of Raqa, to tell them it is strong, that it isn't going anywhere, and to terrify" opponents.

But government forces retook the key Shaar gas field in Homs province, nearly a week after it fell to IS, who killed some 270 government troops in the attack, the Observatory said.

View gallery

Rebel fighters execute two men on July 25, 2014, in Binnish, near Idlib (AFP Photo/Amr Radwan al-Hom …

"The army has succeeded in ejecting the jihadists, and it now controls the site," Abdel Rahman said.

The Syrian army also said its forces and regime paramilitaries "took total control of Al-Shaar mountain and its gas field".

It "killed many terrorists from the so-called Islamic State," the statement carried by state news agency SANA said.

In the northeastern province of Hasakeh, the Observatory reported heavy fighting between jihadists and government forces in an area where IS killed at least 50 soldiers on Friday.

Elsewhere in northern Syria, 30 troops and pro-regime paramilitaries were killed in an overnight ambush in Aleppo province, the Observatory said.

IS, which first emerged in Syria's war in spring 2013, has since imposed near-total control in Raqa province and Deir Ezzor on the Iraq border.

View gallery

An image made available by Jihadist media outlet Welayat Raqa on July 25, 2014, shows allegedly show …

In June, the group proclaimed a "caliphate" straddling Syria and Iraq.

Despite opposition by poorly armed rebels fighting both the army and IS, the jihadists have advanced in several areas of Syria, whose three-year war has killed more than 170,000 people.

"For IS, fighting the regime is not about bringing down Assad. It is about expanding its control," said Abdel Rahman.

- US suicide bomber -

IS was emboldened by a June offensive in Iraq when swathes of the north and west fell out of Baghdad's control.

Syrian rebels say IS transported heavy weapons captured from fleeing Iraqi troops into Syria.

On Friday, Brazilian Paulo Pinheiro, who heads the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told reporters in New York IS "are good candidates for the list" of possible war crime indictees and he was looking into "perpetrators from all sides".

Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate the Al-Nusra Front meanwhile released a video of a young suicide bomber from Florida who blew himself up at an army post in the northwest on May 25.

Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, alias Abu Hurayra al-Amriki, was believed to be the first American to carry out such an attack in Syria's war.

The Observatory also said six children and three women were among 15 civilians killed on Friday in rebel mortar fire on army-held areas of Aleppo city.

Once Syria's commercial capital, the northern metropolis has been divided into regime and rebel-held areas since July 2012.