Israel has pressed on with its bloody offensive against Gaza a day after reoccupying land and waging multiple air strikes in the deadliest 24 hours in the Palestinian territories for four years.

Three Palestinians, one of them a teenager, were killed as Israeli artillery and aircraft pounded the northern Gaza Strip for a second day. Twenty-five Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have been killed since the offensive began late Wednesday.

An Israeli soldier takes his position under a vine during a military operation in the Askar refugee camp in the West Bank city of Nablus. Israel has pressed on with its bloody offensive against Gaza a day after reoccupying land and waging multiple air strikes in the deadliest 24 hours in the Palestinian territories for four years. [AFP]

Faced with the mounting death toll and the worst Middle East crisis in months, the UN Security Council debated a draft resolution demanding Israel withdraw from Gaza immediately and release detained Palestinian officials on Friday.

But the United States, Israel's closest ally, described the text as "unbalanced" and troops continued their ground assault aimed at securing the release of a soldier captured by Palestinian militants 12 days ago.

A Palestinian teenager, a deaf man and militant were killed by Israeli tank fire and an air strike on the town of Beit Lahiya, the main battleground in northern Gaza, medical and security officials said.

In a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, another Palestinian militant was shot dead in clashes with Israeli forces in Nablus, where radicals have threatened to unleash untold violence should Israel move further into Gaza.

Two 16-year-old Palestinians also died from Israeli fire during an incursion into the similarly volatile northern West Bank town of Jenin on Thursday.

But in the biggest escalation of the crisis since the soldier was abducted, Israel on Thursday sent troops deep into the northern Gaza Strip, effectively creating a buffer zone in a territory it withdrew from in September last year.

Israel has vowed to use everything in its power to increase the pressure on the embattled Hamas-led government to free 19-year-old corporal Gilad Shalit and to stop rocket attacks.

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