Rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip toward Israel, Nov. 12, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Ahmed Zakot.

Palestinian groups in Gaza said on Tuesday they would halt cross-border attacks immediately if Israel did the same after the most serious exchanges of aerial fire since a seven-week war in 2014.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, responded by putting the onus on the Palestinians to stop their strikes, saying Israel‘s actions would be determined by their “steps on the ground.”

Since Monday, Israeli air strikes have killed seven Palestinians, at least five of them gunmen, armed factions said. Rocket attacks from Gaza killed a Palestinian, a resident of the West Bank, living in an apartment in Israel, where he worked.

The salves were the fiercest since the Gaza war in 2014, the third between Israel and Hamas in a decade as part of the wider Israel-Palestinian conflict.

On Tuesday, the joint command of the Palestinian armed factions in Gaza said in a statement they would abide by a ceasefire mediated by neighboring Egypt “as long as the Zionist enemy does the same.”

As far as the factions were concerned, an official in one of the Palestinian groups told Reuters, “the truce has gone into effect,” conditional on Israel‘s actions.

Hamas and other armed factions fired over 400 rockets or mortar bombs across the border after carrying out a surprise guided-missile attack on Monday on a bus that wounded an Israeli soldier, the military said.

Asked if Israel was heading toward a ceasefire, Yuval Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, told YNet Internet TV:

“I would say that a more accurate definition is that the Israeli military landed a harsh and unprecedented blow on Hamas and the terrorist groups in Gaza, and we will see if that will suffice or whether further blows will be required.”

Hamas said it was retaliating for a botched Israeli commando raid in Gaza that killed one of its commanders and six other gunmen on Sunday. An Israeli colonel was also killed in that incident.

Sirens rang out in southern Israeli towns on Tuesday and people ran for shelter after Palestinian rockets crashed into several homes overnight. The military said the Iron Dome anti-rocket system intercepted more than 100 projectiles.

Israel responded with dozens of air strikes, hitting buildings overnight that included a Hamas intelligence compound and the studios of Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Television, whose employees had received advance warnings from the military to evacuate.

In aerial attacks on Tuesday, Israel‘s military said it took out a rocket-launching squad and fired at several Palestinians infiltrating through the border fence around Gaza.