The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it has fired warning shots towards pro-Palestinian protesters who crossed the border from Lebanon into Israel.

"A short while ago, IDF tanks fired warning shots toward a number of rioters who crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory," the IDF tweeted.

"The suspects sabotaged the fence and set a fire in the area before returning to Lebanese territory."

This has just come in from our correspondent in Gaza, Rushdi Abualouf, on efforts to end the fighting.

A source familiar with talks aimed at ending this latest round of fighting told the BBC that there have been real efforts in the last few hours to reach an agreement.

The source, who refused to disclose his name, added that intensive Egyptian, Arab and international efforts are taking place.

And in the meantime, there are some positive signals that mediation is bringing results.

Another source says there is an Egyptian offer sent to both Israel and Hamas to a de-escalate the fighting for 12 hours.

Image source, AFP

Palestinians in northern Gaza are seeking refuge after fleeing from Israel's bombardment. Families have been arriving in Gaza City where temporary shelters are being provided.

Some took shelter a UN-run school in Gaza:

"The night was very difficult because of the missiles, the air strikes and the destruction of homes," Kamal al-Haddad told the AFP news agency.

"All the children are afraid and we are afraid for the children."

Ahmad Abu Asal's son is sick: "I have been carrying him and I could not keep carrying him all night. The shelling was random and we could not move."

Salwa al-Attar told AFP she felt trapped in a horror film: "We felt like we were in a horror movie, but it was worse than a horror movie. A spark entered the house and it [the fire] spread everywhere. We could not get out and I was hugging my children.

"There was bombing everywhere; when we moved, there was a strike, and the planes were above us, and the tanks and navy were bombing - and we could not move. The children, women and men were screaming. I have never seen anything worse than this in my life."

Image source, AFP/Getty Images

At least two tanker owners delivering crude oil to Israel have asked to divert from Ashkelon to the port of Haifa due to the violence, shipping sources told Reuters news agency.

Ashkelon has been targeted by Hamas projectiles, along with the cities of Ashdod, Beersheba and Yavne.

If you are just joining us, here is a summary of where things stand:

• Israel has intensified its assault on Gaza, as Palestinian militants continue to fire rockets into Israel on the fifth day of hostilities
• Israel's military says air and ground forces are involved but soldiers have not entered Gaza
• Video from Gaza City showed the night sky lit up by explosions from Israeli artillery, gunboats and air strikes
• Some 119 people have now been killed in Gaza and eight have died in Israel since fighting began on Monday

Russia is worried that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is affecting its security, according to President Vladimir Putin, who has been speaking today at a meeting of the Russian Security Council.

"I would like to hear your opinion on how the situation in the Middle East is unfolding," he told members, according to the Interfax news agency.

"I mean the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is happening in the immediate vicinity of our borders and directly affects the interests of our security."

The current situation which has seen increasing violence in Gaza and Israel was entirely started by Israel, the foreign affairs adviser to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has said.

It was not about telling militants to stop firing rockets, but in the beginning “stopping Israeli aggression”, Dr Nabil Shaath told the BBC on Thursday.

Jerusalem's deputy mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum has told the BBC that the conflict can be ended if Hamas stops firing rockets, adding Hamas had been looking for a war for some time.

"They have been planning this for months. The Palestinian Authority are trying to distract people from cancelling an election."

Image source, EPA

Chancellor Angela Merkel has condemned attacks on synagogues and other Jewish cultural institutions in Germany in the wake of the escalating conflict in the Middle East, and said the authorities would not tolerate anti-Semitic demonstrations, her spokesman has said.

The comments come after protesters outside synagogues shouted anti-Jewish slogans and burnt Israeli flags.

"Anyone who attacks a synagogue or defiles Jewish symbols shows that for them it is not about criticising a state or the policies of a government, but about aggression and hate towards a religion and the people who belong to it," government spokesman Steffen Seibert told a news conference.

Image source, AFP/Getty Images

While there has been considerably more damage in Gaza, the Israeli military says over the course of Thursday evening and Friday morning 220 more projectiles were fired from the Gaza Strip.

Hamas says it launched a new long-range rocket, which was aimed at an airport near Eilat.

In southern Israel an 87-year-old woman died after falling on her way to a bomb shelter near Ashdod. Other areas including Ashkelon, Beersheba and Yavne were also targeted.

Some 119 people have been killed in Gaza and eight have died in Israel since fighting began on Monday.

Image source, AFP/Getty Images

Image source, AFP/Getty Images

Image source, AFP

This striking image shows Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system in action on the left, and rockets fired overnight towards Israel from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on the right.

While the most significant weaponry in the Palestinians' arsenal is their wide variety of ground-to-ground missiles, Israel is the vastly more powerful player.

Its air force, armed drones and intelligence-gathering systems enable it to strike targets in Gaza pretty much at will, says foreign affairs analyst Jonathan Marcus.

The IDF also says 90% of all missiles reaching Israel have been intercepted by Iron Dome.

Image source, Getty Images

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is investigating alleged war crimes in earlier bouts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its top prosecutor has told Reuters news agency.

Earlier this year, Fatou Bensouda's office said it was opening a formal investigation into suspected war crimes in the conflict after almost half a decade of research.

It said it had reasonable basis to believe offences had been committed by both the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups.

The ICC is looking at whether Israeli forces committed war crimes - including disproportionate attacks and wilful killings of civilians - during the 2014 Gaza war.

It is also looking into whether Hamas and other Palestinian armed factions waged intentional attacks on civilians with rocket fire into Israel.

On the current violence, Bensouda said: "This is just to alert people on all sides not to escalate, to be careful to avoid taking actions that will result in the commission of (war) crimes."

Images are coming in from Gaza showing further damage from Israeli bombing. Thursday night saw the heaviest bombardment since the conflict began on Monday.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, AFP

Image source, AFP

Image source, AFP

Image source, AFP

Image source, Reuters

Meanwhile in Israel, attempts by parties to form a coalition to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government following inconclusive elections in March appear to have collapsed after a key right-wing leader pulled his party out of negotiations, calling the hostilities a "reality-changing event", local media say.

Naftali Bennett, the leader of the right-wing pro-settler Yamina group, said he was abandoning coalition talks with Yair Lapid, the opposition leader and Mr Netanyahu's main political rival.

Mr Bennett is now in discussions with Mr Netanyahu's Likud party to try to form a "broad national unity government", according to reports.

Mr Lapid, who heads the centrist Yesh Atid party, has three weeks left of a 28-day mandate from Israel's president to try to form a governing coalition.

If he fails, there is a risk the country will have to hold elections for the fifth time in two years.

Image source, ANADOLU AGENCY

Hamas is the largest of several Palestinian militant Islamist groups.

Its name is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, originating as it did in 1987 after the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Under its charter, it is committed to the destruction of Israel.

Hamas originally had a dual purpose of carrying out an armed struggle against Israel - led by its military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades - and delivering social welfare programmes.

But since 2005, when Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza, Hamas has also engaged in the Palestinian political process. It won the legislative elections in 2006, before reinforcing its power in Gaza the following year by ousting the rival Fatah movement of President Mahmoud Abbas.

Since then, militants in Gaza have fought three wars with Israel, which along with Egypt has maintained a blockade on the strip to isolate Hamas and to pressure it to stop attacks.

Hamas as a whole, or in some cases its military wing, is designated a terrorist group by Israel, the United States, European Union and United Kingdom, as well as other powers.

Read more here.

Our video team have put together this summary of overnight developments as Israel continued its bombardment of Gaza in response to more rocket attacks from the Hamas-run enclave.

Rama Abu Rahmer, a woman who lives in Gaza City, has been speaking to the BBC's Today programme about the Israeli bombardment:

"It was awful, no-one could sleep yesterday, the bombing was everywhere. People were really afraid, especially in the night in Gaza and those who live near the borders, they were leaving their houses. Other people in Gaza were trying to provide them with a place to sleep and food. It was really, really bad. The bombing was not only in the borders but everywhere in Gaza. Full houses were destroyed without previous warning. Families were killed - innocent women and children," she says.

Asked about Israel saying it is targeting Hamas tunnels to prevent rocket attacks, she says:

"They say that but it's not true. There are no tunnels in the houses of innocent people. They are destroying full towers ... which have media offices and innocent people living there who have nothing to do with Hamas. They are taking it as an excuse to destroy the city of Gaza to put pressure on Hamas so it stops the resistance."

"People in Gaza are really afraid, they know they can do nothing, we can only hope that our families and beloved ones are safe."

Israel says the tower blocks targeted house Hamas militants, and it gives advance warning before bombing them.

Satellite imagery captured on Wednesday by Maxar shows the damage wrought in Gaza City and southern Israel.

Image source, EPA/Maxar Technologies

Image source, EPA/Maxar Technologies

Image source, Reuters/Maxar Technologies

Image source, Reuters/Maxar Technologies

Image source, Reuters/Maxar Technologies

Image source, Getty Images

At least 119 have been killed in Gaza, including 31 children, and 830 others wounded in the current hostilities, Palestinian medical officials said.

The death toll in Israel stands at eight, including an 87-year-old woman who died after falling on her way to a bomb shelter near Ashdod.

Image source, Getty Images

An escalation of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians has led the UN to warn of a "full-scale war".

The latest violence followed a month of rising tensions in Jerusalem, though the conflict has gone on for decades.

But how did it start?

See here for a brief history of the conflict.

Jack Hunter
BBC News

Since missiles began pounding close to her family's home on the Gaza Strip this week, Najwa Sheikh-Ahmad has been too scared to sleep.

"The nights are so scary for us - for our children," Najwa, a mother of five, says. "In any moment your home might be your grave."

All day, she can hear the roar of Israeli fighter jets flying overhead, along with the sound of explosions of missiles and aerial bombardments. "Everything is shaking around us," she says. "And we are shaking too because we are so afraid."

She is one of many residents in Israel and Gaza who have been gripped by fear, as Palestinian militants and Israeli forces continue to exchange fire, and street violence among Jewish and Israeli Arab mobs has erupted in many Israeli towns. More than 100 people have been killed in Gaza and seven in Israel since fighting began on Monday.

The BBC has spoken to two mothers - one Palestinian, one Jewish Israeli - who have been caught up in the worst fighting the region has experienced in years.

When a violent Israeli-Arab mob reached the street outside her home in the town of Lod on Monday night, Tova Levy knew it was time for her Israeli-Jewish family to flee.

Throughout the evening, Tova had been reading worrying updates in her community WhatsApp group. Friends sent messages warning that a "mob" had left one of the local mosques, and were involved in full-scale rioting across the mixed Arab-Jewish Israeli town, lying 15km (9 miles) south-east of Tel Aviv.

Soon, she says, the rioters were close to her house, where she lives with her husband and two young children.

"They started burning things. [It was] really, really shocking... I was terrified," Tova says. "I thought, 'What's preventing them from walking up and breaking down my door?'"

Read more here.