This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Binyamin Netanyahu has instructed the Israeli military to "intensify even further" its assault on the Gaza Strip.

While stopping short of announcing a ground invasion, the Israeli prime minister told assembled security chiefs in Beersheba on Wednesday: "The IDF [Israel Defence Forces] is prepared for any option. Hamas will pay a heavy price for firing at Israeli citizens."

Israeli jets and naval gunfire pounded targets in the Gaza Strip overnight as a large-scale military operation was launched against the Islamist militant group Hamas in the coastal enclave.

The air assault continued throughout Wednesday morning bringing the Palestinian death toll to 32 in two days, including several senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants. More than 150 people have been injured. There have been about 440 air strikes since the beginning of the week.

Palestinian medics in Gaza City said two women and four children had been killed in strikes in the north and east of the city near the border with Israel on Wednesday morning.

"Four Palestinians were killed in air strikes, including two brothers who are 12 and 13 years old in Shejaiya, while a four-year-old boy and a woman were killed in a raid on Zeitun," emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told Agence France-Presse.

On Tuesday evening, sirens sounded across Israel for the first time since 2012, driving Israelis into bomb shelters. One hundred and sixty-five rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel in the past 24 hours, according to Israeli military estimates. There have been no reports of deaths from the rocket attacks. About 45 of those rockets targeted cities in the centre of Israel – Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Hadera, 72 miles north of the Gaza Strip.

On Wednesday morning, several missiles were fired towards Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport. The city's smaller airstrip at Herzliya has been closed due to the threat of rocket fire. Israel announced on Tuesday it had authorised the callup of up to 40,000 reservists for a possible ground operation as it began moving convoys of additional tanks and other armour to the Gaza border.

"We have been instructed by the political echelon to hit Hamas hard," Israel's chief military spokesman, Brig-Gen Moti Almoz, told army radio adding that the military action would take place in stages.

The announcement came as explosions boomed across the Gaza Strip, sending plumes of grey smoke into the sky and shaking buildings in streets already largely emptied of people.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, phoned the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, on Tuesday evening to ask him to intervene in the defence of Palestinians in Gaza.

According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, Sisi responded: "Egypt is concerned about the safety of the Palestinian people and wishes to stop this dangerous attack and reach a ceasefire as soon as possible."

The Israeli military, threatening a long-term offensive, said Operation Protective Edge aimed to strike Hamas and end the rocket attacks that have intensified and reached deeper into Israel in recent weeks.

"We will not tolerate rocket fire on Israel's cities, and we are preparing to expand the operation with everything at our disposal to strike Hamas," said Moshe Ya'alon, Israel's defence minister, who announced a state of emergency in the south of the country.

In a nationally televised statement, Netanyahu said continued rocket attacks on Israeli communities would not be tolerated.

"Therefore I have ordered the military to significantly broaden its operation against Hamas terrorists and against the other terrorist groups inside Gaza," he said. "I call on you to display patience, because this operation could take time."

The White House condemned the rocket attacks against Israel. "No country can accept rocket fire aimed at civilians and we support Israel's right to defend itself against these vicious attacks," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

Abbas called on Israel to halt the air strikes immediately and appealed for calm. "The Palestinian leadership is conducting intensive and urgent contacts with regional and international parties to stop the escalation," he said.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday night it had foiled an attempt by Palestinian militants from Gaza to infiltrate southern Israel by sea, the first such effort in recent memory, a spokesman said. Lt Col Peter Lerner said four attackers had been killed after coming ashore on Zikim beach.

After the worst outbreak of violence along the Gaza frontier since an eight-day war in 2012, the Israeli military said a ground invasion of the Palestinian enclave was possible, though not imminent, and urged citizens within almost 25 miles of the territory to stay close to bomb shelters.

The military said it had struck militant compounds, concealed rocket launchers and other militant infrastructure sites. Most were targeted by air strikes, and three were attacked from the sea.

The military offensive is taking place against a background of rising tensions across Israeli and Palestinian areas following the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers, which Israel blamed on Hamas, and a gruesome killing, believed to be in revenge, by Jewish extremists of a Palestinian teenager last week, which sparked widespread violent protests.

In one strike, three Hamas members from the Qassam brigades were killed in their car at a crossroads in Zarkar, along with two bystanders, residents said. One of those killed was Muhammad Abu Shaban, a senior figure in Hamas's military wing.

As the residents began to describe what had occurred, three further explosions detonated loudly, scattering them.

A strike in the early hours of Wednesday on a house in Beit Hanoun in the north of the Strip killed six people, including a senior leader of the militant group Islamic Jihad.

Hafez Hamad, two of his brothers and his parents were killed along with an unidentified woman, Gaza's interior ministry said.

Netanyahu at first seemed unwilling to be drawn into a prolonged and bloody conflict over Gaza, offering "quiet for quiet" if Hamas halted its rocket fire. But the death of six Hamas members in an explosion in a tunnel on Monday prompted immediate threats of retaliation and escalation of rocket fire.

Hamas, which has been badly hit by an Egyptian blockade that has closed the Rafah tunnels and halted the flow of goods and funds into the Strip, might believe it could gain from a prolonged conflict – as the group did after Operation Cast Lead, the 2009 invasion of Gaza.

"We have repeatedly warned Hamas that this must stop and Israel's defence forces are currently acting to put an end of this once and for all," said Netanyahu's spokesman, Mark Regev.