'We are so afraid': civilians try to shelter as Israel vows to intensify bombardment

Civilians in Gaza sheltered in fear amid constant bombardments targeting residential buildings and communications infrastructure yesterday, as Israeli officials vowed to further tighten a punishing siege of the densely populated territory.

- Ruth Michaelson

"I can see the plumes of smoke from the bombings through my window," said Rama Abu Amra, 21, speaking by telephone from south of Gaza City. She screamed as the bang of a nearby explosion could be heard.

"The bombs are falling all around us, we can't even tell where they're hitting. I can even smell the gunpowder now," said the university student.

"It's so scary. We don't know what's happening around us. We are so afraid about what will happen next. For two days, we have woken up hearing bombs falling around us without knowing what's happening.

It has come as a total shock, we almost didn't know if it was happening in real life or in a nightmare." Israeli forces hammered the Gaza Strip while battling Hamas militants in southern towns bordering the territory. The airstrikes followed Saturday's unprecedented incursion by Hamas militants, who killed more than 800 Israelis and took at least 100 more hostage.

The Palestinian health ministry said 560 people, including children, had been killed in Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, with at least 2,900 wounded.

Abu Amra described a sense of widening fear at the news that Israel had ordered what the defence minister Yoav Gallant labelled "a complete siege" of Gaza, including a complete shutdown of electricity and a block on the entry of food and fuel.

Israel's infrastructure minister, Israel Katz, said he had given an order to cut the supply of water to Gaza, a slim strip of land that houses an estimated 2.3 million people, almost half of whom are children. "What was in the past will no longer be in the future," he said.