ASHKELON, ISRAEL, AND JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, GAZA STRIP — Pierced by an Israeli missile, the mosque exploded at 1 in the morning, crushing the Balousha family's flimsy metal roof next door.
Anwar Balousha awoke on the floor, covered by rubble, and heard moans from the bedroom next to his. Neighbors crawled over a collapsed wall and pulled him, his wife and four of their nine children to safety.
Five Balousha girls -- Tahir, 17; Ikram, 14; Samar, 12; Dina, 8; and Jawaher, 4 -- were dead, swelling the list of Palestinian civilians killed in three days of Israeli airstrikes on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
About 8 1/2 hours later and 10 miles away, air raid sirens wailed across the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, but Hani Mahdi, 27, reacted too late. A Grad missile fired from Gaza tore through a building site for the city's new library, killing Mahdi and wounding 23 other construction workers.
The two attacks Monday tell much about a battle of unequal forces, one that suddenly escalated Saturday when Israel began a crushing assault on an Islamic paramilitary group that it said had turned tiny Gaza into an intolerable source of rocket fire.
Israel widened the scope of its air attacks Monday to strike the homes of two senior Hamas commanders, killing seven people identified by medical authorities as civilians. The secular Palestinian Authority leadership in the West Bank announced a suspension of its U.S.-brokered peace talks with Israel in protest over the Gaza offensive.
At least 364 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Saturday; the United Nations says 62 of them were noncombatant women and children. By contrast, four Israeli civilians have been killed by attacks from Gaza, bringing the total to 11 this year.
Israel is far better equipped than Gaza to absorb the conflict. Israelis within a 20-mile radius of Gaza have been instructed by the authorities to stay close to protected spaces. Hanukkah school vacations in the area, due to end Monday, were extended indefinitely.
When rockets fall on Ashkelon, a team of civil servants maps them on a giant computer screen in an underground "war room," quickly calculates the number of people likely to be affected and dispatches emergency crews to the scene.
Gaza's emergency services are crippled by the airstrikes and power outages caused in part by an Israeli blockade. The coastal enclave's police force isn't much help; run by Hamas, its officers are Israeli targets, killed or driven into hiding.
