Three Palestinians were killed in fresh Israeli air strikes in Gaza on Saturday morning, among them a six-year-old child, medics said, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon heads to the region to bolster truce efforts.
The new peace push comes as Israel stands poised to intensify a ground operation inside the besieged Palestinian territory aimed at stemming rocket fire by militants on day 12 of its bloodiest conflict since 2009.
The United States has urged its Israeli ally to do more to limit the high civilian death toll from the operation while supporting the Jewish state's right to defend itself.
A man injured in an earlier air strike died of his wounds, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said, raising the toll on the 12th day of violence in Gaza to 318 Palestinians.
The three new deaths were a man killed north of Gaza City and a six-year-old child and a 23-year-old man killed in the northern Gaza area of Beit Lahiya.
A fourth man from the Jabaliya area died of his wounds on Saturday, Qudra added.
Their deaths were reported after five bodies were pulled from a home hit by an Israeli air strike in southern Gaza's Khan Yunis.
Also in Khan Yunis, the body of another man was retrieved from the rubble of a building, and an additional man died of wounds sustained on Friday, Qudra said.
The discoveries came after the deaths of seven people outside a mosque in Khan Yunis, three of them from the same family.
Three more people were killed in three separate strikes in Beit Hanun in the north, Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, and another in Khan Yunis.
In Khan Yunis, a later strike on a home killed Raed al-Laqan, 28.
The deaths took to 318 the toll from an Israeli operation to stamp out rocket fire from Gaza, many of them women and children.
One Israeli civilian and one Israeli soldier have been killed since the campaign started on July 8, and several wounded.
The soldier was killed by friendly fire, the army said.
Some 2,283 Palestinians have been wounded, Qudra said.
Operation Protective Edge is the bloodiest conflict in the besieged coastal enclave since 2009.
Israel launched its ground offensive late Thursday, starting a new phase in the operation which it said was aimed at destroying tunnels used by the territory's dominant power, Islamist movement Hamas.
