Six Palestinians, including two children of the same family, were killed in the early hours of Thursday morning west of Khan Younis in ongoing Israeli bombardment targeting Palestinian homes, said the Palestinian emergency services.

Earlier emergency services had announced that more than 66 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday, whereas the official death toll raised at 714, without counting those who died during the early morning hours of Thursday during an aerial bombardment  and according to Ashraf al-Kountra the victims are 18. Most of the victims are civilians, according to local emergency services which is confirmed by UN.

Despite of the current official reports, it is difficult to determine the exact number of victims due to the chaos prevailing in Gaza Strip.

As for Israel, 34 people were killed and 32 of them were soldiers fighting in Gaza and two of them were civilians who were killed by rockets fired from Gaza into Israel.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu  and Palestinian President Abbas and said that efforts to achieve a ceasefire and put an end to the bloodshed are in progress. “We have certainly made some steps forward. There is still work to be done,”  said U.S. State Secretary, who returned to Cairo in order to meet Egyptian mediators.

An Egyptian official said he expected a humanitarian truce to go into effect by the weekend, but a U.S. Official said that “It would not be accurate to say that we expect a ceasefire by the weekend. We are continuing to work on it, but it is not set at this point.”

Meanwhile, the Security Council of Israel did not publish the decision taken after a meeting held late at night and concerned the proposed humanitarian truce during which any attacks should stop. However, even if there is a temporary ceasefire, negotiations for a final agreement which will end the conflict will start over after several days, as experts mentioned.