Rescuers pull bodies from Gaza municipal building used as shelter

GAZA — Gazan rescuers on Tuesday pulled the body of a four-year-old girl and others from the rubble of a municipal building where many were sheltering. The building was damaged during an Israeli air strike.

The girl was named Shahid Abu Rokbah, and rescuers said her family fled from east of the Khan Younis district to inside the city in search of safety.

"They tried to escape death only to find it ... They came to find shelter. They were taking refuge next to the stairs, where it could have been a safe place. They targeted them and killed them," said volunteer Mohammad al Najjar.

Najjar and others dug through the rubble of the building, which housed shops on the ground floor, with hand tools to avoid injuring anyone still alive. A building nearby was also knocked down.

Israel pounded the Gaza Strip on Tuesday with the fiercest air strikes in its 75-year conflict with the Palestinians, razing whole districts to dust after Hamas gunmen rampaged through towns in the deadliest attack in Israel's history.

Najjar said they were retrieving body parts but also hopeful of finding survivors.

"Some injured people were sleeping here. This is their blood. Here there was a mother and her children. We removed the woman in the evening and the children were martyred and we just took them out from under the rubble," he said.

Ala Abu Tair, 35, who sought shelter with his family after fleeing Abassan Al-Kabira near the border said, "There is an extraordinary number of martyrs, people are still under the rubble, some friends are either martyrs or wounded," he said.

"No place is safe in Gaza, as you see they hit everywhere."

Gaza's health ministry said Israel's retaliatory strikes have killed at least 770 people and wounded more than 4,000.