Russia urges observance of Gaza ceasefire accord

Russia is urging Israel and Palestine to exclude violence in the Gaza Strip and comply with the ceasefire accord, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday. An Egyptian-brokered truce failed to take effect on Sunday as Israel traded fire with Gaza's Islamic Jihad militants, in which nine Palestinian gunmen and an Israeli civilian were killed. "We are insistently urging all the parties involved to show restraint and exclude violence whose recurrence only plays into the hands of those who are not interested in establishing peace in the region. We hope that the truce agreement reached with Cairo's mediation will be strictly observed," the ministry said in a statement. Moscow perceives the latest developments in Gaza and in the south of Israel, which was shelled with rockets fired from the Palestinian enclave, with great alarm as civilians are suffering as a result of this, the document said. "A new spiral of confrontation is undermining the efforts, which the Mideast Quartet of international mediators is actively taking in compliance with the Quartet's statement made in New York on September 23 to reset the negotiation process between Israelis and Palestinians," the document said. During the talks in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on September 23, the international mediators comprising Russia, the United States, the United Nations and the European Union called on Israel and the Palestinians to resume direct peace talks without preconditions within a month and commit to seeking a deal by 2013.