An Israeli missile milliseconds before it destroys a residential building in Gaza, killing its occupants.
The move will allow the Israeli military to substantially widen its 23-day campaign against Hamas, which has already claimed more than 1,360 Palestinian lives - most of them civilians - and reduced entire Gaza neighbourhoods to rubble. Fifty-six Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians have died during the campaign.
Israel has now called up a total of 86,000 reserves during the Gaza conflict. At least 19 air strikes were carried out overnight, officials said.
Against a background of heavy fighting in Gaza and the shelling of a UN-run school, the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, convened his senior colleagues in a security cabinet on Wednesday to discuss the crisis amid warnings that Hamas's demands for lifting the siege of the Palestinian coastal enclave were a "non-starter" and stalling ceasefire efforts in Cairo.
Israel was not close to a ceasefire, the newspaper Haaretz quoted an unnamed senior official as saying after the five-hour cabinet meeting.
"When a ceasefire proposal that answers Israel's important needs is laid on the table, it will be considered. The operation continues and the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] will expand its attacks against Hamas and the other terror organisations." Temporary humanitarian ceasefires would continue, the official said.
The White House, which has been at odds with Netanyahu over efforts to secure a ceasefire, reacted to the shelling of the school by issuing an unusually firm condemnation of the incident and expressing serious concern that thousands of Palestinians taking shelter in supposed UN havens were now at risk.
The US condemned the attack but refused to apportion blame and, hours later, confirmed it had recently provided Israel with a shipment of ammunition, after the country's existing supplies appeared to be running low.
The provision of ammunition could prove controversial for Washington, which has expressed growing concern about the deaths of Palestinian civilians while maintaining support for its close ally.
Comment: What more evidence does ANYONE need that the US govt. is simply lying and pandering to international opinion when it 'criticizes' Israel for murdering civilians. After all, the US govt. has murdered more civilians around the world in the last 20 years than any other country.
"The US is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defence capability," said the Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby. "This defence sale is consistent with those objectives."
The Israeli military requested the additional ammunition on 20 July. The US defence department approved the sale three days later, Kirby said.
He can try and blame the victims or the aggressors but when you provide the tools for the Israeli actions then you have to accept that you are a direct accessory to the murders
Still, killing is the one thing Obama seems to me good at ... probably got a bit bored just killing people with drones