Gaza City, Palestinian Territories: Two Palestinians were killed and another wounded on Thursday in a fresh Israeli strike on northern Gaza, medics said, raising the death toll to 13 in a vast Israeli operation in the strip.
There were no immediate details as to the exact location of the strike, nor of the identities of the victims, and the Israeli military had no immediate comment on the incident.
Egypt's foreign minster has called for US intervention to end Israeli' aggression' as tensions escalate.
The call follows an official request from Egypt for a UN Security Council meeting on the issue.
Three people were killed earlier on Thursday when rockets fired from the Gaza Strip hit the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Malahi, according to an Israeli police spokeswoman.
"We have three killed," spokeswoman Luba Samri told AFP, saying four other people were also injured in a "direct hit on a house" in the town which lies 15 kilometres north of the Gaza Strip.
The rocket attack comes amid a vast Israeli operation against Gaza militants which began on Wednesday with the killing of a top Hamas chief.
Earlier on Thursday, an Israeli air strike killed three Palestinians, which at the time brought the toll from the Israeli operation to 11 dead and at least 100 wounded, medical officials said.
The armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, said that the three men were all members and were hit as they travelled in a motorcyle-taxi.
The Israeli military launched its operation on Wednesday with the killing of a top Hamas commander followed by what Palestinians said were at least 60 Israeli air strikes.
Ahmad Jabari, the operational commander of the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, was killed along with his bodyguard, Mohammad Al Hams, in an initial Israeli strike on a car in Gaza City, the Islamist movement said.
Shortly afterwards, Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with more strikes, killing five more people, two of them children, Hamas health minister Mufid Mukhalalati said in a televised press conference at Gaza City's Shifa hospital.
Late Wednesday medics reported another fatality in the wave of strikes on targets across the territory.
Hospitals and medical centres across Gaza were put on high alert after the initial strikes as Israel warned the hit on Jabari was only "the beginning" and said "a significant number" of arms dumps were within civilian and residential areas.
Hamas's Al Aqsa television showed ambulances racing through the streets on Wednesday, transporting casualties to crowded emergency rooms, including at the Shifa hospital.
A man wearing blue pyjamas was seen carrying his son and two men supported an elderly man as he struggled to move away from the site of one explosion.
The attacks came after a flare-up in violence between Israel and Gaza-based groups, which saw more than 120 rockets fired from the Palestinian territory into the Jewish state, and Israeli air strikes and shelling that killed seven people.
Earlier, a statement from the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades said the strike that killed Jabari had 'opened the gates of hell'.
Israel's military spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovitch said the attack is the "start of a broader operation."
Meanwhile, Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi decided on Wednesday to recall the ambassador to Israel after the air strikes.
Mursi decided to "recall Egypt's ambassador to Israel," spokesman Yassir Ali said in a statement broadcast on state television.
He also ordered the foreign ministry to summon Israel's ambassador in Cairo.
