THREE CHILDREN WERE among 10 people killed in fresh Israeli raids across Gaza tonight, according to emergency services.

Five people, including three children, were killed when a tank shell slammed into a house in the northern town of Jabaliya, spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told AFP

Another person died in a strike on central Gaza, and four more were killed in and around the southern city of Khan Yunis, he added.

Earlier today, exchanges of fire killed eight Palestinian children in a Gaza refugee camp.

The missile that slammed into a public playground in the seafront Shati UN refugee camp also killed at least two other people and wounded another 46, many of them also children, the emergency services said.

AP / Press Association Images AP / Press Association Images / Press Association Images

AP / Press Association Images AP / Press Association Images / Press Association Images

The scene at the Shati refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, earlier today.

Tonight’s strikes came as Israel began an intensive bombardment of the battered Palestinian enclave after four soldiers were killed in a mortar attack on southern Israel and a fifth died in fighting in southern Gaza, the army said.

“Over the course of the day, 5 IDF soldiers were killed,” a statement said, indicating that four of them “were killed along the border of the Gaza Strip as a result of mortar fire”.

Their deaths raised to 48 the total number of Israeli soldiers killed since July 17 when troops began the ground phase of a major military operation against Gaza militants.

The overall operation began on July 8, and has so far killed a total of 48 soldiers and three civilians — two Israelis and a Thai farm worker.

More than 1,050 Palestinians have been killed and over 6,200 wounded.

AP / Press Association Images.... Smoke from an Israeli strike rises over Gaza City AP / Press Association Images.... Smoke from an Israeli strike rises over Gaza City / Press Association Images.... Smoke from an Israeli strike rises over Gaza City

United Nations figures show more than three quarters of the victims were civilians — among them more than 230 children and around 120 women.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged an immediate end to the ongoing violence, saying earlier that the area was in a “critical condition”.

“In the name of humanity, the violence must stop,” he told reporters in New York, after returning from a visit to the region.

Includes reporting from AFP.