JERUSALEM AND GAZA CITY — It was graduation day at Gaza City's main police station, and a host of VIPs had turned out Saturday to honor the latest class of Palestinian cadets amid the usual pomp and circumstance.
"We were feeling safe and calm," said officer Hussein Ahmad, 24.
What happened next has been broadcast repeatedly in all of its chaotic intensity across the Arab world and around the globe. Just after 11 a.m., Israeli aircraft launched dozens of closely timed missile strikes on police stations, government buildings and other sites associated with Gaza's ruling Hamas movement.
Video from the graduation ceremony showed the bloodied bodies of dozens of dead and wounded young Palestinian men in black uniforms, as survivors rushed to assist the injured.
The multiple strikes roiled the tiny, tightly packed coastal enclave and immediately overwhelmed Gaza's threadbare hospitals. Egypt, which has kept its border crossing at Rafah generally sealed for more than a year, said it would accept casualties.
At Gaza City's main Shifa Hospital, bodies were arranged in the parking lot. One woman wandered, screaming, "My son, my son!" Eventually she found the boy's body and fetched a cloth to cover his near-naked corpse.
"It was horrible, really horrible," hospital director Hassan Khalaf told Al Jazeera International news channel. "It's really a desperate situation."
Gaza's hospitals were already critically low on most supplies because of a long-term blockade by Israel, assisted by Egypt, designed to pressure the militant Hamas organization that seized control of the strip last year. After Saturday's Israeli air attacks, 215 victims arrived at Shifa Hospital within 15 minutes, Khalaf said.
Yehya Ayman, 12, ran around in shock and resisted his father's attempts to pull him away from the bodies of his uncle and brother.
"I want to see them. I am not afraid," Yehya said.
The boy then turned to a militant fighter and pleaded, "You have to shell [the Israelis] and take revenge for us."
Radio broadcasts called every doctor and medical professional to their posts and appealed to residents for blood donations.
Staff members at Shifa Hospital transformed the orthopedic wing into an extra ICU and emptied the maternity ward to use the delivery rooms for emergency surgeries.
