After a week of intense bombardments from land, sea and air, Israeli ground troops staged a massive ground offensive against Hamas-controlled Gaza. The incursion by Israeli forces brought the Palestinian death toll since the start of the conflict to over 500.

Gaza ground attack

Sunday, 4 January

Soldiers on the border between Gaza and Israel after Israeli ground forces entered the Hamas-controlled territory after nightfall on Saturday, after a week-long bombing campaign to prevent Hamas fighters from firing rockets at Israel

Sunday, January 4

Smoke billows from the east side of Gaza City. Israel's ground incursion was accompanied by some of the most intensive bombardment yet of the densely-populated territory since the outbreak of hostilities eight days ago.

Sunday, January 4

Palestinians flee the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.

Sunday, January 4

An Israeli soldier fires tear gas at Palestinian stone-throwers during a protest against Israel's offensive in Gaza, in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Sunday, January 4

Jordanian protesters hold a model rocket as they shout anti-Israeli slogans during a demonstration against Israel's Gaza offensive in Amman. Israel's deadly attacks spawned a host of demonstrations in the Arab world as well as the west. Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip has inflamed sentiment across the Arab world against governments seen as doing little or nothing to stop the onslaught

Sunday, January 4

French Jewish groups organised a demonstration near the Israeli embassy in Paris in support of the Israeli population.

Sunday, January 4

A wounded Palestinian boy is carried into a hospital in Gaza. The Palestinian death toll is over 500 since the beginning of the hostilities

Sunday, January 4

A Palestinian man reacts at the hospital after two of his relatives were killed by an Israeli shell

Sunday, January 4

Israeli army medics carry a injured soldier into a hospital in the southern city of Beersheba. Some 30 Israeli soldiers were reported to have been wounded since the ground offensive began, the army and medics said.

Sunday, January 4

Rosetta Mesodi stands with family pictures in the remains of her home in Sderot after it was destroyed by a rocket fired from Gaza

Monday, January 5

Senior Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar vows that the Islamists are heading towards 'victory' against Israel in his first broadcast since the start of Israeli onslaught on December 27

Monday, January 5

Syrian workers torch US and Israeli flags as they demonstrate in Damascus against Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip

Monday, January 5

President Shimon Peres visits a wounded Israeli soldier at Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva, Israel

Monday, January 5

Smoke rises over a mosque in the Gaza Strip, after a Hamas target was bombed by the Israeli army

Monday, January 5

An ambulance worker carries the body of a Palestinian boy from the Al-Samoni family, which lost its mother and four children when an Israeli shell hit their house

Tuesday, January 6

Israeli army soldiers take cover as a mobile artillery piece fires towards targets in the southern Gaza Strip

Tuesday, January 6

Smoke rises after an Israel air strike at a building near the border with Egypt in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip

Tuesday, January 6

A Palestinian man listens to the news on the radio at a United Nations school after fleeing his house. An Israeli air strike killed three Palestinians in another UN school in Gaza