Mortars, closures disrupt shaky Gaza Strip truce

GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired two mortar shells into southern Israel on Friday in the latest challenge to a ceasefire deal and the enclave's Islamist Hamas rulers, who appealed to all factions to abide by the deal.

The shells landed in a farming community near the border with the Gaza Strip, causing no casualties, an Israeli police spokesman said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the cross-border fire, the fourth such incident since the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire began on June 19.

Israel has kept border crossings used to bring humanitarian and commercial supplies into the Gaza Strip closed since Wednesday, after a cross-border rocket attack by the Islamic Jihad militant group.

Israel allowed fuel to reach the territory's sole power station on Friday.

Speaking in Gaza City hours after the two mortars were fired, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh urged "all parties to respect the national consensus" behind the ceasefire.

Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri lashed out at militants who are defying the truce. "It has become clear that some Palestinian parties do not want this calm deal to succeed and they do not want the siege to be lifted," Masri said.

"Those who fired the rockets did not aim them at the Zionist enemy but fired them to settle internal scores," he added, in an apparent reference to President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction.

A militant arm of Fatah, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, said it fired a rocket into Israel on Thursday.

Al-Aqsa said it would abide by the ceasefire but vowed to respond to Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.

The group said it was not behind Friday's mortar attack.

A European Union official said an estimated 600,000 liters of industrial fuel was being pumped through the Nahal Oz border terminal to Gaza's power station, enough to keep the plant running for several days.

The EU funds fuel deliveries to the power station.

Both sides have been trading blame for breaching the ceasefire agreement, which is backed by the West with the aim of advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that have shown little outward sign of progress.

The ceasefire deal calls for Hamas to stop cross-border rocket fire and for Israel to gradually ease its embargo on the Gaza Strip.

(Additional reporting by Joseph Nasr; Writing by Adam Entous; Editing by Giles Elgood)