Ten-year-old Afnan Shuheiber was playing on a Gaza City rooftop with her cousins when she became one of at least 73 children killed by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip.

The spiraling number of children killed in the latest conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza has raised international concern.

Egyptian soldiers in north Sinai prevented an aid convoy of activists from reaching the Rafah border crossing with the embattled Palestinian Gaza Strip on Saturday, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

An army officer at the Balloza checkpoint, one of many along the desert highway to Rafah, told an AFP correspondent that the security situation in the restive peninsula was too unstable to allow the convoy of 11 buses and 500 activists to pass.

The Philippines ordered its some 100 nationals in Gaza to leave the besieged Palestinian territory Saturday, as the death toll from 12 days of Israeli strikes rose to 318.

Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has slammed Turkey's handling of violent anti-Israeli protests in Ankara and Istanbul, in a diplomatic spat over the Jewish state's assault on Gaza.

Lieberman accused Turkey of not taking the "necessary preventative measures" to stop protests getting violent after people angered by the offensive in Gaza tried to storm Israeli embassy buildings.

The Israeli army's ground offensive in Gaza is purportedly aimed at destroying a network of sophisticated cross-border tunnels, which Hamas and other militants have dug to infiltrate Israeli lines.

In 2006 Israel imposed a blockade on the impoverished coastal enclave after Gaza militants captured an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid.

Loyalty to Resistance bloc MP Ali Fayyad on Friday discussed with United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Derek Plumbly the ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip and its repercussions on the region's stability.

"Fayyad expressed concern over the repercussions of the Israeli massacres and violence in Gaza,” the state-run National News Agency reported.

An Israeli force failed on Friday to kidnap a Lebanese shepherd who hails from the border town of Shebaa, but managed to take the flock of goats instead.

"An Israeli infantry force comprising 20 members crossed the border line near Borkat al-Naqqar and marched 50 meters (inside Lebanese territory) in an attempt to kidnap shepherd Asaad Hamdan,” LBCI television reported.

As Israeli troops pushed into Gaza overnight, intense tank fire shook parts of Khan Yunis, sending a flood of patients into the southern city's Nasser hospital.

The shells smashed into buildings near the border with Israel, prompting thousands to flee their homes under the cover of darkness, only missiles lighting up the sky.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke Friday of bolstering his ground assault on Gaza in what commentators said was part of a strategy to pressure Hamas into a truce.

"My instructions and those of the defense minister to the military, in accordance with security cabinet's approval, is to prepare for the possibility of a significant broadening of the ground activity," he told ministers at a special cabinet session at the defense ministry in Tel Aviv.

Pope Francis on Friday phoned Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to call for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza conflict, the Vatican said.

Francis "reminded the presidents" about the need "to bring an end to hostilities, making efforts to promote a truce, peace and reconciliation in the hearts of those involved", read a statement from the Vatican.