Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza today, killing five Palestinians from the same family, two of them children, as the war between Israel and Hamas entered a 47th day.
Eighty-one Palestinians and a four-year-old Israeli boy have been killed and nine Israeli civilians wounded since Tuesday, when truce talks collapsed ending nine days of calm.
Israel has vowed no let-up until it can guarantee the safety of its civilians, while Hamas insists that Israel must end its eight-year blockade of the territory as part of any truce.
The Israeli military said it had carried out more than 20 air strikes over the Gaza Strip today and that at least three rockets or mortar rounds had hit southern Israel.
Witnesses and Palestinian officials said two mosques were destroyed in the Khan Yunis area of southern Gaza, while a third, in the Shati refugee camp, which had already been damaged, was bombed again.
The deadliest Israeli air strike today levelled a home in Al-Zawayda in central Gaza, killing a couple, their sons aged three and four, and a 45-year-old aunt, medics said.
Another seven Palestinians were wounded in an Israeli strike that struck a house in Zeitun, east of Gaza City, medics said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed yesterday that the army would exact harsh retribution for the killing of a four-year-old child by shrapnel that tore through his home in kibbutz Nahal Oz in southern Israel.
Daniel Tragerman was the first Israeli child killed since the current conflict began on July 8.
Israel said militants had fired the deadly mortar round from next to a school in the Zeitun neighbourhood of Gaza City.
Netanyahu said "Hamas will pay a heavy price for this attack," his spokesman Ofir Gendelman said on his Twitter account.
The army and the Shin Bet security agency would "intensify ops against Hamas", he added.
At least 2,097 Palestinians have been killed since July 8, 70 per cent of them civilians, according to the United Nations.
On the Israeli side, 68 people have died, all but four of them soldiers.
It is the deadliest fighting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 2005 end of the second intifada, or uprising.
