A senior leader of the Palestinian Hamas movement, Nizar Rayyan, has been killed in the latest air assault by the Israeli military in Gaza.
Rayyan is the most senior Hamas official killed since Israel unleashed its massive bombardment on Gaza, in what Israel argues is a response to persistent rocket fire from the enclave.
Medics say 10 people, including Rayyan, his wife and three children, were killed and about 30 were wounded in the air attack on Rayyan's home in the northern Jabalya refugee camp on Thursday.
Rayyan, 51, had allegedly refused to take security precautions despite Hamas figures being at risk of assassination. He held a PhD in Islamic studies and lectured at the Islamic University in the Gaza Strip.
Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Gaza, said the killing of Rayyan comes at a time when international organizations are saying Israel's policy of targeting the homes of Hamas leaders is against international law.
"While they may be targeting senior members of the factions and military wings, these organizations say there is no doubt that there are families there and they are in residential neighborhoods," he said.
"As we have seen in this particular strike, it was a direct hit in the heart of the Jabalya camp, the most densely populated in Gaza, home to 70,000 Palestinians."
At least 420 people have been killed and 2,100 injured since Israel's aerial bombardment of the coastal strip started six days ago.
The UN has said at least 25 per cent of the dead are civilians.
The 1.5 million people living in Gaza are unable to flee the bombardment as crossing points remain closed for most of the time.
Earlier on Thursday, Israel launched attacks from drones, manned aircraft and navy vessels on a number of buildings in Gaza, including the parliament building and the justice ministry.
Palestinian officials said attacks on government offices left four people dead and at least 25 people injured.
Meanwhile, at least 10 rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel.
The Israeli town of Beer-sheva, which lies about 40km from the boundary, was hit and the Israeli army said one rocket hit a residential building in the port city of Ashdod - more than 30km from Gaza.
No Israelis were injured.
UN failure
With international pressure mounting on both sides to agree a ceasefire, the UN Security Council failed to agree on the wording of a draft resolution to end the violence at an emergency meeting held late on Wednesday in New York.
'No humanitarian crisis'
Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, said on a visit to Paris on Thursday that there was "no humanitarian crisis in the Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce," reinforcing her rejection of a French-proposed ceasefire to allow in humanitarian aid.
"Israel has been supplying comprehensive humanitarian aid to the Strip ... and has even been stepping this up by the day," the foreign ministry quoted her as saying according to Reuters.
However, Karen Abu Zayed, the commissioner for the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, said on Thursday: "In my eight years in UNRWA, the urgency of an appeal for the people here [in Gaza] has never been so acute. I am appalled and saddened when I see the suffering around me."
The UNRWA has made an emergency appeal for $34 million to help the Gaza population.
Hasan Khalaf, the assistant deputy health minister in Gaza, said it was "not a war in Gaza, it is an Israeli massacre".
"There is no comparison between what we have and what [Israel] are doing to us. The international community are standing unable to help us, and yet we know they have been helping Israel for tens of years.
"Even now they are comparing those getting scared in the south of Israel, and those buried under the rubble after having their houses bombarded."
Khalaf said the central hospital in Gaza has been receiving about 250 people per day.
"We received them in surgery, intensive care and the operating room. We had to increase the capacity for operating rooms from six to 12," he said.
"If we run out of supplies, the international community will know very well," Khalaf said. "The International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Bank supply us. They know what shortage we have."
The UN food distribution centre in Gaza, which has been closed for two weeks because of a shortage of supplies after Israel stepped up its two-year blockade of the Strip, is expected to open on Thursday.
PHOTO CAPTION
File photo of senior Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan, center, seen during Hamas military exercise in the Jebaliya Refugee Camp, northern Gaza Strip.
Al-Jazeera