Israeli strike kills militant leader in Gaza

An Israeli airstrike killed a militant leader in the Gaza Strip earlier today, just hours ahead of an expected seven-hour truce announced by Israel that was meant to open a "humanitarian window" for aid.

The Islamic Jihad group, a close ally of Hamas, said that Daniel Mansour, its commander in the northern part of Gaza, died when the strike hit his home just before dawn today.

Israel announced this morning that it would hold its fire in most of the Gaza Strip for a seven-hour “humanitarian window’’, amid UN and US outrage over a deadly strike near a United Nations school and growing world calls for an end to the bloodshed.

Since the fighting erupted, Hamas has fired more than 3,000 rockets into Israel, many of them intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome defense system.

U.N. officials say more than three-quarters of the dead in the war have been civilians, including the 10 people killed Sunday at a U.N. school that has been converted into a shelter in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah.