Israeli forces have widened an offensive in Gaza throughout today, killing 16 Palestinians in air strikes and clashes with militants.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered tanks to push deeper into Gaza overnight after militants linked to the ruling Hamas movement fired rockets into a major Israeli city for the first time.
According to the army, gunmen also killed an Israeli soldier in northern Gaza.
Elsewhere, Israeli troops reportedly killed a Palestinian gunman in exchanges in the West Bank city of Jenin.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said the slain gunman was one of their fighters.
Separately, Israeli troops were reported to have shot dead a 16-year-old during a confrontation in Jenin with stone-throwing youths and gunmen.
In New York, Arab states asked the UN Security Council to demand Israel's immediate withdrawal from Gaza, but France and the United States criticised their proposed resolution as unbalanced.
Haniya calls for international intervention
Tanks have also pushed into the ruins of three of the 21 Jewish settlements evacuated when Israel left Gaza last year.
The military said its forces would stay in the area, several kilometres inside northern Gaza, 'until the completion of their mission'.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, whose Hamas-led government has been directly targeted in the offensive, has described the assault as 'collective punishment' on his people and demanded international intervention.
The incursion, nearly a year since Israel withdrew from Gaza after 38 years of occupation, expands an offensive that began last week after the capture of an Israeli soldier.
Corporal Gilad Shalit, 19, was captured by three Palestinian groups, including Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.
