JABALIYA, Gaza Strip (AFP) - A leading Palestinian militant was killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City as Israeli troops pressed a deadly week-old incursion into the northern Gaza Strip.
The dead commander was identified as Bashir al-Dibsh, 40, Gaza leader of the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad.
Fellow militant Dharif al-Ariir was also killed in the attack on their vehicle just outside a Gaza refugee camp, medics said. A third person was wounded.
The violence raised to 80 the number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since Israeli armour poured into the north of the territory on September 28.
In the Jabaliya refugee camp, epicentre of the fierce fighting sparked by the incursion, a Palestinian gunman was killed by an Israeli tank shell.
Further south, Israeli troops shot dead a 13-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl from an observation tower in the town of Rafah, on the Israeli-controlled border with the Gaza Strip.
Dr Ali Musa, head of Rafah hospital, said the body of Eman al-Hams was riddled with 20 bullets, including five to the head.
But Israeli military sources insisted troops had fired at the girl after she crossed into a restricted zone and was spotted planting "what seemed to be an explosive charge".
In northern Gaza, troops pressed their mission to carve out a buffer zone inside the territory to keep Palestinian militants out of rocket range of neighbouring Israel.
The UN Security Council was due to hear calls for urgent action to halt the Israeli onslaught later Tuesday amid mounting international concern over the civilian casualty toll.
Even close Israeli ally the United States delivered a mild rebuke, saying it hoped to see a swift end to the incursion, which Israeli leaders have warned might last for weeks.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell repeated Washington's position that Israel had a right to defend itself, but called on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for a "proportionate" response.
"Mr Sharon finds the need to respond to that," Powell said before arriving in Brazil. "I hope it does not expand. I hope that whatever he does is proportionate to the threat Israel is facing and I hope this operation can come to a conclusion quickly."
Israeli chief of staff, General Moshe Yaalon, said Monday that the Gaza operation and, in an interview published Tuesday, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz made clear the operation would be stepped up, and not cut short in the face of international pressure.
"We will intensify our activity on the ground and in the air," Mofaz told the Yediot Aharonot daily. "The only way to lower the level of terror is to strike at it, to strike at it and again to strike at it.
"I can't say exactly how many weeks the operation will continue. We will take every course of action, and we will persevere with it as long as necessary ... The deeper the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) activity is, the more limited the fire on (the nearby Israeli town of) Sderot will become."
Separately, an Israeli government source said that a senior Palestinian official had in the past few days appealed to Sharon's office to end the week-long operation, claiming he had asked Hamas to stop the rocket attacks on Israel.
Since the initial contact was made, the two sides have been talking daily and contact has even been established in the field between Israeli commanders and Palestinian security officials, the source said.
The resolution to be debated by the UN Security Council "demands the immediate cessation of all military operations (in northern Gaza)" and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the area.
The debate came amid a fierce war of words between Israel and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) over allegations by the Israeli army that the agency had allowed Palestinian militants to abuse a UN ambulance to transport rockets.
Agency chief Peter Hansen dismissed the charges as "malicious propaganda", but the United Nations was expected to send a team of experts to Israel on Tuesday to examine the disputed video footage released by the army.
The army has already removed from its website all copies of the grainy tape, which Israel had said proved its case, but which Hansen dismissed as a bad-faith distortion that endangered his staff.