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Gaza residents fear new war

Civilians queue at bakeries and stock up on food in fear of a new war with Israel.

A Palestinian man gestures as he inspects the scene of an Israeli air strike in Rafah in the southern of Gaza Strip March 14, 2014. A small armed faction in the Gaza Strip fired rockets at Israel on Thursday, drawing retaliatory air strikes and pushing cross-border violence into a third day despite a truce called by the more powerful Palestinian group Islamic Jihad. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa (GAZA - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST) - RTR3H1MY
A Palestinian man gestures as he inspects the scene of an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, March 14, 2014. — REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The sound of thunder mixed with that of Israeli bombing on March 11. Gazans could no longer tell when the sky was exploding and when a bomb was exploding.

Social networking sites were filled with posts combining the fear of a new war with the joy of rain, following a military escalation between Israel and the Palestinian resistance factions. The escalation began on March 11, after an Israeli airstrike assassinated three members of the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, in the southern Gaza Strip. The Al-Quds Brigades responded by launching an operation they called "Breaking the Silence" on the evening of March 12, during which they fired 130 rockets and shells at Israeli cities.

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