Israel begins ground operation

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the military to begin its ground offensive late on Thursday, an official statement from his office said.

"The prime minister and defense minister have instructed the IDF to begin a ground operation tonight in order to hit the terror tunnels from Gaza into Israel," it said.

The army said in a separate statement it had "initiated a ground operation within the Gaza strip" with the goal of striking a "significant blow to Hamas' terror infrastructure."

Witnesses reported heavy artillery and naval shelling along the Gaza border.

Netanyahu said he gave the order for the ground offensive after Hamas, which governs Gaza, rejected an Egyptian ceasefire plan. He also said that the militant group tried to infiltrate Israel through a tunnel from Gaza earlier on Thursday.

A Hamas spokesperson told Reuters news agency that Israel's ground invasion was "foolish" and would have "dreadful consequences."

Israel last carried out a major ground offensive in Gaza in January 2009.

Deadly offensive

Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 240 people over the past ten days, medics have said. One Israeli has been killed by fire from Gaza.

Three people were killed by Israeli tank fire on Thursday, emergency services spokesman Asharf al-Kidra said, including a four-year-old child and a 15-year-old boy.

The three killed late Thursday were the first deaths following a five-hour humanitarian truce requested by the United Nations, which brought aid to besieged residents in Gaza.

Shortly after their deaths, another strike in the southern city of Khan Yunis killed four-year-old girl Rahaf al-Jubur, and 29-year-old man Hamza al-Abdaleh. Kidra added that another child died of wounds sustained in an earlier strike in Gaza City.

Washington calls death toll 'tragic'

The US on Thursday hit out at Israel for not doing enough to prevent civilian casualties during its military campaign. According to UN figures, nearly 80 percent of those killed thus far in Gaza have been civilians.

Noting the four boys killed while playing on a beach in Gaza Wednesday, the State Department condemned the rising death toll in the Palestinian territory.

"The tragic event makes clear that Israel must take every possible step to meet its standards for protecting civilians from being killed," said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. "We will continue to underscore that point to Israel."

Psaki also criticized Hamas militants for continuing to fire rockets into Israel, saying it is prolonging the conflict.

"I don't think we've made any secret about our strong concern about the actions of Hamas, the indiscriminate rocket attacks, the targeting of civilians," she said. "And that concern remains."

dr/rg (Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa)