The military wing of Hamas has said it agreed to an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Israel, after three days of bloodshed in and around Gaza.

The statement late on Wednesday came after three days of violence in which eight Palestinians were killed while fighters have fired scores of rockets Israel, one of which slammed into a border police outpost, wounding four.

"In response to the Egyptian efforts to try and stop the aggression on our people, we at Al-Qassam Brigades and all resistance factions declare our commitment to stop this round of confrontation, as long as [Israel] commits to stopping its crimes," said a statement from Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

The statement noted the Brigades had fired 96 rockets and nine mortars across the border during the recent wave of violence, in a rare show of force from the group that had been observing a de facto truce on rocket attacks.

"Our confrontation with the enemy in this round was at the minimal level of fire and responses, this is a message that the [Israeli] leaders should understand very well," said the statement.

As the violence rumbled on, a senior Gaza official had told the AFP news agency that Egypt was in contact with Israel and the militant groups in a bid to restore calm.

"The Palestinian factions are ready to return to the calm as long as Israel stops its attacks," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Prior to the al-Qassam statement, two Palestinian youths were wounded in an airstrike on a Hamas training site in northern Gaza. A second attack at another Hamas training camp in Nuseirat in the center of the territory left no casualties.

An Israeli police spokeswoman said on Wednesday that 58 rockets and mortars hit southern Israel. She added that eight people were being treated for shock.

In an earlier Israeli airstrike at a farm in the Zeitun neighborhood, just east of Gaza City, 14-year-old Moamen al-Adam was killed and his father seriously wounded, medics said. Another two people were also wounded.

Earlier on Wednesday, a missile strike on a motorcycle in the southern border city of Rafah killed 21-year-old Ghaleb Ermilat, whom locals said was a member of the military component of Hamas which rules the territory.

The Israeli military said he was a "global jihad operative" who was behind a deadly ambush along the Israeli-Egyptian border on Monday morning that killed an Israeli civilian and sparked a firefight in which two of the gunmen were killed.

PHOTO CAPTION

A Palestinian looks at the blood-stained motorcycle ridden by 21-year-old Ghaleb Ermilat, when he was killed in an Israeli military strike in Rafah.

Al-Jazeera