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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will leave Saturday for the Middle East to help end the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, the U.N. political chief said Friday.

Ban will be travelling to the region as Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip killed 11 people early Saturday, medics said, on day 12 of a major operation against the Palestinian territory.

The deaths took the toll from an Israeli operation to stamp out rocket fire from Gaza to 307, many of them women and children. Among those killed early Saturday was one seven people outside a mosque in the southern city of Khan Yunis, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told Agence France-Presse.

Three of the dead were from the same family and among those was one woman.

One Israeli soldier was killed in an apparent friendly fire incident, the military said, and several other troops were wounded since Thursday's launch of an Israeli ground offensive in Gaza. It said some 240 targets, including 21 concealed rocket launchers and 10 tunnels, have been attacked.

The U.N. chief has been discussing the crisis with many world leaders in recent days, and his move follows a failed attempt by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi to broker a return to the 2012 Israeli-Hamas cease-fire.

Three more people were killed shortly afterwards, in three separate strikes in Beit Hanun in the north, Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, and another in Khan Yunis, according to AFP.

A later strike on home also in In Khan Yunis killed 28-year-old Raed al-Laqan.

At an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, Jeffrey Feltman, the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, said a ceasefire is "indispensable." But the only way to make it stick is for the international community to "assume its responsibility to urgently help restore a serious prospect for a two-state solution that brings an end to the decades-long conflict and occupation," he said, according to the Associated Press.

Feltman said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Sisi reportedly agreed at a meeting in Cairo Thursday on the need for an immediate cease-fire and the urgency of a donors' conference to start rebuilding the Gaza Strip. Abbas was scheduled to arrive in Turkey on Friday to meet the country's president and prime minister to press for help in ending the crisis, he said.

The U.N. refused to say where Ban was heading on Saturday, but Feltman said he wants to "express solidarity with Israelis and Palestinians," so he will almost certainly visit both places, though almost certainly not Gaza for security reasons. The U.N. chief also plans to in work coordination with key regional and international players, he said.

"Israel has legitimate security concerns, and we condemn the indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza into Israel that ended yesterday's temporary ceasefire. But we are alarmed by Israel's heavy response," Feltman said.

The Israeli land advance followed 10 days of barrages against Gaza from air and sea, about 1,500 rockets fired by Hamas into Israel.

*Agencies