A Palestinian boy stands by as his family loads their belongings onto a truck in order to flee their bombarded neighborhood in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. (Hatem Omar, Maan Images)

Even in the darkness, we could see the piles of rubble: one had been the police station, destroyed in the heavy bombing on the first day of Israel's offensive, killing 22 Hamas policemen; another pile accounted for the houses that had been destroyed around Muntasa, a favoured children's play area and park which the Israelis say militants had used for firing rockets - residents deny the claim. The park is no more, a field of smashed masonry and concrete.

Rafah, the southernmost city of Gaza, probably suffered more than any other from the eight long years of conflict before the start of Operation Cast Lead. But even on the short journey here from the Egyptian border, some of the new devastation visited on the area and its inhabitants was evident. The Hamas mayor of Rafah had been building a new house for himself; it had been pulverised and lay in ruins.

Earlier, as we entered Gaza from Egypt - among the first Western journalists to do so - the red lights of Palestinian ambulances flashing against a darkening sky as medics unloaded the wounded at the border were the first real sign of the war that had raged for three weeks. A boy, perhaps 15 years old, was delicately lifted from one ambulance to another, the medics struggling to prevent the drips attached to him from tangling.

As night fell over Rafah, from which thousands had fled to escape the relentless bombing of the smuggling tunnels along the border, you could still hear a pilotless Israeli drone overhead, a reminder of how uneasy the ceasefire that began at 2am yesterday will be.

The Harb family were reinstalling the windows of their second-floor apartment, little more than 500m from the border. Even without fuel for the generator to heat the house during the power cuts, explained Jawwad Harb, it was preferable to expose his six children to the January cold, using coats and blankets to protect them, rather than risk them being cut by glass during the scores of repeated explosions that had shaken the house.

"The Israelis were using a weapon that seemed to go deep underground," said Mr Harb. "It sent out waves like an earthquake. It was like being in an earthquake every hour."

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Mr Harb, who works for the humanitarian organisation, Care, said he had felt helpless during the airstrikes as he snuggled against his children, trying to comfort them with the idea that the bombing they could hear would be "very temporary".

He recalled that when he had said this, his 15-year-old daughter, Banyas, had replied: "This is temporary for ever", meaning that she "is forever moving from war to war since she was born. Then my six-year-old son, Ziad, asked me 'are we going to die?' That really broke my heart."

With electricity blackouts periodically cutting water supplies to the apartment, Mr Harb set out one day to fetch 20 litres of clean water from the local desalination plant.

"On my way back there were four airstrikes. Some people poured out the water and ran away. But I have six children at home in need of clean water so I hugged my canisters to my chest like something precious and kept on till I got home."

But the worst day, he said, was probably last Friday.

As we waited in vain on the other side of the crossing for the Egyptians to let us in to Gaza on Saturday, we had watched what seemed fairly relentless bombing sorties of F16s streaking across the sky along the border.

But Mr Harb said this was nothing compared to the previous day. Their house is near the offices - empty since the beginning of the offensive - of the Hamas "benevolent association", part of the social network which has helped to form its political base.

To read the full article please visit The Independent