OCCUPIED JERUSALEM/GAZA CITY: A days-old truce announced by Gaza militants appeared to be fast unraveling Thursday after at least 10 people were killed and 30 wounded in Gaza in 24 hours of Israeli airstrikes.

Rising tensions in and around Gaza kicked off early Wednesday, just days after militant groups said they would stop cross-border rocket fire, with Israel quietly agreeing to limit its strikes to those caught in the act.

But an airstrike on Rafah early Wednesday which killed Islamic Jihad militant Ismail al-Ismar sparked a flurry of retaliatory rocket attacks, followed by further Israeli raids, rendering the truce agreement meaningless.

Islamic Jihad said Thursday it would call off its rocket attacks if Israel first halted its airstrikes, which have killed nine, at least two of them militants with Islamic Jihad’s armed branch, the Al-Quds Brigades.

“If Israel stops its attacks, the Palestinian resistance will stop firing rockets,” spokesman Daoud Shihab told AFP, saying the group did not want “an escalation.” The truce announced Sunday night had been respected by militant groups including Islamic Jihad until Israel chose to break it, he said.

“The last targeting in Rafah started the new crisis. Israel broke the truce when they killed one of the local leaders of the Al-Quds Brigades. After that, the Brigades answered this aggression,” he said.

“The truce is related to Israeli action. If Israel stops their operations, Palestinian resistance will stop firing rockets.”

Earlier, Israeli Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor said Israel was ready to respect the tacit cease-fire agreement as there was calm along the border.

“We will not jeopardize the calm if the other side does the same. But we will not wait to act while we are being shot at and people are dying,” he said. “I hope this message will be understood.”

Since the strike that killed Ismar, militants have fired around 20 rockets into Israel and another ten Palestinians have been killed in subsequent air raids.

Robert Serry, the U.N.’s Middle East envoy who had worked with Egypt to set up Sunday’s truce, expressed “deep concern” over the threat to the cease-fire. He called on both sides to act immediately “to prevent any further escalation,” a statement from his office said.

Ghazi Hamad, deputy foreign minister in Gaza’s Hamas-run government, told AFP the situation could easily spin out of control.

“There are no guarantees that the situation is under control, no guarantees that the firing will be stopped,” Hamad said.

Hamad expressed “surprise” that the Jewish state had targeted the Jihad leader and said Hamas had been in phone contact with both Serry and the Egyptians “to find a kind of understanding about the truce.”

Hamas wanted to avoid further conflict and was trying “to keep the situation calm,” he said, acknowledging that it was not easy.

“We want a national consensus but some of the factions work alone. It is a big problem.”

Wednesday’s violence began with the killing of the Jihad leader and several hours later, medics found the body of 65-year-old man who had died in a raid in central Gaza.

An evening strike on Gaza City killed a second Jihad militant called Atiya Muqat, while an attack on Rafah killed four men working in the cross-border tunnels.

Several hours later, two people were killed and around 20 wounded in an airstrike on the northern town of Beit Lahiya, medics said.

The army said the overnight operations had hit militants that had already fired or were about to fire rockets at southern Israel.

Sunday’s truce was declared after four days of bloodshed initially sparked by a coordinated shooting attack on a desert road near the Red Sea resort town of Eilat that left eight Israelis dead. Israel blamed Gaza’s Popular Resistance Committees and began an air campaign to take out its leaders. That left 15 Palestinians dead, among them seven PRC militants and two Islamic Jihad operatives.

The PRC denied any responsibility for the Eilat attacks.

Ensuing Israeli operations against the cross border attackers also killed five Egyptian security personnel, straining relations between Israel and Cairo’s transitional rulers.

In apparent efforts to ease tensions, Israel offered Thursday to investigate the killings jointly with Egypt.

“Israel is ready to hold a joint investigation with the Egyptians into the difficult event,” a statement issued by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office quoted his national security adviser, Yaakov Amidror, as saying.

Amidror said the terms of such an inquiry “would be set by the armies of both sides,” going a step beyond Defence Minister Ehud Barak’s earlier pledge to hold an investigation and share its findings with Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.