Every meter of this stretch of avenue entering Sderot, a town in southern Israel, bore a trace of the carnage. At the foot of a motorcycle, a dark bloodstain. At the side of the road, a car with its front end pulverized, as if crushed by a giant fist. On the traffic circle, a van washed up between the road and the sidewalk, the bullet holes barely visible. Next to it, four immaculate white body bags.
Two of them contained the vehicle's passengers, "Chinese workers," said Igor Aronov, who's Jewish and from Dagestan. Aronov has spent his whole life here, in Sderot, a town on the outskirts of Israel where you can find cheap accommodation if you live close to the enemy. The Gaza fence is 1 kilometer away.
Igor was passing by at 7 am, on his way home from work – he's a security guard. "There were 10 fighters, in a pick-up truck, Hamas guys. They shot at the Chinese," he said, maintaining that the victims were killed with knives. He ran home without a second thought and would be out again in the evening to withdraw cash and meet up with his family in Ashdod, 30 minutes away.
Further on, there's a bus stop and also one of Sderot's many rocket shelters. Did the inhabitants, trying to take cover, arrive a moment too late? On the right, another bloodstain. On the left, two more, covered by a few swarms of flies. Everywhere, abandoned vehicles in the middle of the street, strewn with bullet fragments, and electric-blue nurses' gloves littering the ground like faded petals.
A truck arrived to load the body bags. The rear door opened, revealing six more spotless bags. The bodies were piled one on top of the other. The truck drove away. The corpses were among the 250 or so dead from the Hamas operation, a staggering human toll, the worst since the Islamist movement took over Gaza in 2007. The violence of the raid left Israel stunned, as did the men taking a breath of fresh air on their doorstep. One of them was at a loss for words. "Hamas came through... Just like that... This morning... They were firing in all directions," said the 50-something in a tank top, behind the fence of the house. "They took over the police station... And they're still there," he added. The Israeli security forces, with the help of the army, finally regained control of the police station during the night.
The Hamas offensive, the most ambitious in its history, began at dawn with rocket fire. But the group was not content with salvos, however numerous. It launched simultaneous incursions from Gaza, by land, sea and air via two-seater microlights, with one pilot and one gunner. The attackers, in pick-up trucks, crossed the separation border and charged into the towns surrounding the enclave. They destroyed at least one tank, seized jeeps and immediately drove them over to the Gaza side, documenting the affront.
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