Israeli air strike on Gaza City kills wife, infant daughter of elusive Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif

An Israeli air strike on Gaza City kills the wife and infant daughter of elusive Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif as Truce talks between Israelis and Palestinians collapse, Israel's Haaretz says.

"The wife of the great leader was martyred with his daughter," in a strike on Tuesday night, Hamas' exiled deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.

He said nothing about the fate of Mr Deif himself. He said Israel had been looking for "an excuse to target a big Hamas leader".

Egyptian attempts to broker an end to a month-long war between Israel and Hamas militants collapsed in heavy fighting Tuesday, with Palestinian militants firing dozens of rockets and Israel responding with airstrikes across the Gaza Strip.

Israeli soldiers raid Gaza rocket launch site

International pressure mounts on both sides to halt attacks

Israeli naval commandos clashed with Hamas militants in a raid on the coast of the Gaza Strip on Sunday, in what appeared to be the first ground assault of a six-day Israeli offensive on the territory aimed at stopping Palestinian rocket fire.

With aerial support from fighter jets, the Israeli force attacked a site in northern Gaza used to launch long-range rockets, an Israeli military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, said. Militants opened fire, wounding four commandos, but the launch site was hit, he said.

Hamas said its fighters had fired at the Israeli force offshore, preventing them from landing.

Lerner said the forces had "completed their mission" and that the results of the raid "would be the first published ground activity" by naval troops in Gaza, in an offensive that Palestinian officials said has killed at least 160 Palestinians, many of them civilians.

No Israeli has been killed by Hamas rocket fire.