AP PHOTOS: Fear, sorrow, death and destruction in battle scenes in Israel and Gaza Strip
In Israel, a frightened woman runs down the street cradling a young girl in her arms as a car behind her is engulfed in a ball of flames from an unprecedented surprise attack by Hamas militants.
In Gaza City, an anguished Palestinian woman embraces the head of a dead man carried by a crowd through the streets after he was killed in retaliation by Israeli forces.
The images are just two of hundreds by Associated Press photographers that show the destruction, terror and sadness on both sides of the conflict — and the triumph by some Palestinians who see the attack as a victory. Hundreds have been killed on both sides of the border in fighting that continued Sunday.
In Saturday’s early morning assault, a photo shows the smoky trail of rockets from Gaza arcing through the sky against the backdrop of a rising sun. Rockets that struck a parking lot next to a residential building in the Israeli city of Ashkelon torched cars and sent thick black plumes skyward. Israeli security forces used a table like a stretcher to rescue a woman who lay in tattered, bloody clothes.
Men in Gaza stood atop a burning Israeli tank with their arms raised in victory. On Sunday, a Palestinian man sat alone in front of the rubble of a destroyed apartment building that was tilted on its side behind him, exposing partial rooms still intact and laundry that had been hanging on balconies now covered in dirt and rubble.