Israeli forces are searching for a soldier believed captured, as a 72-hour truce with Hamas in Gaza collapsed just hours after it had begun.
The soldier, named as Hadar Goldin, 23, disappeared when Israeli forces trying to destroy a suspected militant tunnel were attacked, Israel’s military said.
Two soldiers died in the firefight in the southern Gaza Strip at 06:30 GMT.
The Gaza health ministry said at least 53 people were killed by Israeli shelling shortly after the incident.
Hamas has not confirmed or denied capturing a soldier.
In 2006 Palestinian militants captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and held him for five years.
He was released in November 2011 in exchange for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Lt Goldin’s father Simha said in a statement that the family was “confident that Israel will do everything to bring Hadar back home”.
Some 1,500 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have now died in the latest conflict, and 8,400 have been injured, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Sixty-one Israeli soldiers have died, as well as three civilians in Israel.
Friday’s violence comes after a ceasefire brokered by the US and UN to give civilians a reprieve from the violence collapsed.
During the morning many Palestinians headed towards areas that had been heavily shelled areas to see if their homes were still intact.
But fighting then resumed, with Israel and Hamas accusing the other of breaking the ceasefire.
Gaza’s health ministry said 53 Palestinians were killed and more than 200 injured in an Israeli attack near the southern town of Rafah after the ceasefire began.
Israeli foreign affairs spokesman Yigal Palmor told the BBC that Israeli forces had retaliated after being attacked in what seemed like a planned move by Hamas.
“There was a full-scale attack on an Israeli unit and this unit had to respond,” he said.
Israel says its response will be “crushing”.
But Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoun said: “The Israelis are the ones who breached the ceasefire, and the Palestinian resistance acted in a way that ensures its right of self-defence.”
Another Hamas official said the announcement of the soldier’s capture was “a justification for Israel retreating from the truth and a cover-up for massacres”.
The latest conflict comes after the abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers in June, which Israel blamed on Hamas and which led to a crackdown on the group in the West Bank.
Hamas denied being behind the killings.
Tensions rose further after the suspected revenge killing of a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem on 2 July, after which six suspects were arrested.
After a series of Israeli air strikes in which several members of Hamas’ armed wing were killed, Hamas claimed responsibility for firing rockets out of Gaza for the first time in 20 months.
The next day, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, which it said was aimed at stopping rocket attacks and destroying Hamas’ capabilities.
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