Al-Ashram died when an Israeli missile struck open ground after dark in the north of the territory.

Broader offensive

Israeli leaders said cross-border rocket fire may leave them no choice but to launch a broader military offensive against Hamas, which seized Gaza in June after routing forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, said on Thursday that "a major ground operation was real and tangible" and that Israel was "not afraid of it".

Barak's threat of a full-scale invasion came on the same day that Israel killed five children playing football in a missile attack.

Hamas said it has hit Israel with more than 80 rockets during the same three-day period.
 
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, has so far been wary of launching a major ground offensive, which could incur heavy casualties and derail US-backed peace talks with Abbas.

But domestic pressure is growing.

Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said Barak had sought to prepare the way for an offensive by sending confidential messages to world leaders, including Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, who is due to visit the region next week.

"Israel is not keen on and rushing for an offensive, but Hamas is leaving us no choice," Barak told them, Yedioth said.

Plea for pressure

A Hamas spokesman told Al Jazeera that Israel should be pressured by other countries to put an end to the raids.

"We know that the Gaza Strip is a small area. It is open for Israel - they can kill most of the Palestinian people and destroy everything," Ghazi Hamad said.

"The job of the international community is to stop the Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip."

On Friday, a senior Israeli defence official said that Palestinians firing rockets from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip would bring upon themselves what he termed a "shoah", the Hebrew word for holocaust or disaster.

Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defence minister, told Israeli army radio that "the more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they [Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger 'shoah' because we will use all our might to defend ourselves."

The word "shoah" is rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi Holocaust of Jews.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas official, strongly criticised Vilnai's comments.

"We are facing new Nazis who want to kill and burn the Palestinian people," he said.