Few hours before a 72-hour truce in Gaza, Israeli tank and air fire had killed 14 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and the Israeli army said five of its soldiers died in mortar fire near the border with the Palestinian enclave.
The 72-hour cease-fire started at 8am local time (0500 GMT) on Friday.
While the truce was accepted by Hamas, the main power in Gaza, a spokesman for the movement stressed it was dependent on Israel reciprocating.
The emergency services said 14 Palestinians died in Israeli attacks, including a woman and at least two children who were killed by Iraeli tank fire in the southern Gaza Strip early Friday.
Six of them were killed in an Israeli air strike in the same area.
UN figures show about two-thirds of the victims were civilians, drawing sharp criticism from around the world.
Valerie Amos, the UN's humanitarian aid coordinator meanwhile told a UN Security Council meeting that there were now 440,000 displaced fleeing fighting in Gaza, and that hundreds of thousands more were without basic services, power and food.