Israel declares 7-hour truce in Gaza

Israel said it would unilaterally hold fire in most of the Gaza Strip on Monday to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid and allow some of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by an almost 4-week-old war to go back to home. The announcement, made first to Palestinian media, met with suspicion from Gaza’s dominant Hamas Islamists. Earlier, Israeli shelling of a UN-run shelter in Gaza killed at least 10 people on Sunday. An Israeli defense official said the ceasefire, from 10 am to 5 pm (local time), would apply everywhere but areas of the southern town of Rafah where ground forces have intensified assaults after three soldiers died in a Hamas ambush there on Friday. ‘If the ceasefire is breached, the military will return fire during the declared duration of the truce,’ the official said. The official said east Rafah was the only urban area in which troops and tanks were still present, having been withdrawn or redeployed near Gaza's border with Israel over the weekend, report agencies.