GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Terrified prisoners fled a Gaza City jail bombed by Israeli warplanes on Sunday, their faces white with dust and red with blood as they stumbled over huge piles of rubble.
Across the territory, grieving families pitched traditional mourning tents of green tarp outside the homes. Yet the rows of chairs inside these tents remained largely empty as residents cowered indoors for fear of new Israeli strikes. Plumes of gray smoke rising into the sky marked the site of the latest Israeli attacks.
Even for war-weary Gazans, who’ve lived through countless Israeli incursions, air attacks and months of bitter Palestinian infighting, the latest surprise Israeli air offensive was unusually traumatic. In all, more than 290 people — most of them Hamas police officers, but also 20 children — were killed in about 300 Israeli air attacks over two days.
Israel widened its air offensive Sunday, pounding smuggling tunnels and a central prison, sending more tanks and artillery toward the Gaza border and approving a reserves callup for a possible ground invasion.
Israeli leaders said they would press ahead with the Gaza campaign despite enraged protests across the Arab world and Syria’s decision to break off indirect peace talks with the Jewish state. Israel’s foreign minister said the goal was to halt Gaza rocket fire on Israel for good, but not to reoccupy the territory.
Crowds of Gazans breached the border wall with Egypt on Sunday to escape the chaos. Egyptian forces, some firing in the air, tried to push them back into Gaza and an official said one border guard was killed.
Hamas, in turn, fired rockets deeper than ever into Israel, near the Israeli port city of Ashdod. But rockets fire dropped off sharply, from more than 130 on Saturday to just over 20 on Sunday. Still, Hamas continues to command about 20,000 fighters.
On Saturday, shortly after Israel unleashed the deadliest-ever offensive against Hamas and its rocket squads, hospital morgues quickly overflowed. In the initial chaos, the dead were wrapped in blankets and lined up on the ground, as frantic relatives searched for their loved ones.
On Sunday, 25 unclaimed bodies still lay in the morgue of Gaza’s largest hospital, Shifa, their faces disfigured beyond identification. In the southern town of Rafah, residents held a mass funeral for 14 people, including two brothers, and a father and son, all of them members of the Hamas security forces.
From a regular day to chaos
The shelling began at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, a work day in Gaza, just as children returned home from school and women shopped in local markets.
At that moment, Israeli warplanes unleashed scores of bombs and missiles simultaneously at Hamas security installations. Residents described a veil of dust, smoke and rubble covering one world, and lifting to reveal another filled with horror. Women were running, carrying their children, uniformed students screamed and cars crashed into each other as panicked drivers tried to get away.
The dead and the wounded were rushed to hospitals in cars. Some carried blankets filled with body parts. “I have a head here,” one man yelled as he rushed into the crowded reception area of Shifa Hospital.
Police directed them to go to the hospital morgue, opposite the maternity ward, but it was already full by Saturday afternoon. One dead woman lay on the floor, her face covered in blood. Men searching for relatives smacked their heads against the floor in grief and helplessness.
Bombing frees prisoners
Israeli strikes hit a new series of targets on Sunday: a fuel tanker, a Hamas television station, about 40 smuggling tunnels and a prison.
The prison bombing set free dozens of prisoners, who rushed out from their cells, carrying bags of clothes and blankets with them as they scrambled over rubble, fleeing Hamas police.
Hundreds gathered Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, trying to get across the wall. Egyptian border guards opened fire above the crowds, trying to scatter them. Instead, residents manned a bulldozer and tried to knock down the wall.
When that didn’t work, they set an explosive device beside it, knocking what Gaza resident Fida Kishta said appeared to be a small hole. Dozens of residents clambered over it, but were eventually returned to Gaza.
At times, shock turned into confusion and denial. A news photographer who found the body of a friend under the rubble drove him home, unwilling to believe he was dead.
“My children are wetting the bed, they cry when they hear planes,” said Amal Hassan, 38, a mother of three children. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Maybe the next bomb will fall here, maybe the next person killed will be one of us.”
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