JERUSALEM — An Israeli missile strike on an 11-story apartment tower in Gaza City brought the entire building crashing down on Saturday, soon after its residents were told to evacuate, according to residents and the military. The attack signaled Israel’s willingness to take more audacious military action in Gaza, as Palestinian militants continued to fire barrages of rockets and mortar rounds into Israel.

Ten people were wounded in the strike on the apartment building, four of them children, according to a health ministry spokesman in Gaza.

Earlier in the day, the government of Egypt and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority issued calls in Cairo for a new, open-ended cease-fire in Gaza and a resumption of indirect talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians to try to bring an end to the fighting, which shows no sign of abating after more than six weeks. Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas official in Gaza, said in a statement that the Palestinian groups were studying Egypt’s call to return to negotiations. Israel refuses to negotiate under fire.

The Israeli military said the apartment building contained an operational command and control center of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that dominates the Palestinian coastal territory, and that operatives were using the building as a base for their activities. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, could not immediately specify which floor, or floors, of the building were the targets in the attack, or whether the intention had been to destroy the whole tower.