It started as a peaceful rally along the littered streets of Rafah town in the southern Gaza Strip, and ended in bloodshed. The angry fists of more than 1,000 Palestinians demonstrating against a two-day Israeli siege of the nearby Tel al-Sultan part of Rafah's large refugee camp were met with Israeli tank rounds and a helicopter missile, writes Nuala Haughey in Rafah, Gaza.
Ten were killed in the strikes, among them teenagers and young boys, with blood and body parts splattered over the dusty ground.
As panicked survivors fled from the scene, fearing more attacks, ambulances and private cars ferried the dead and injured to the local hospital, and mosque loudhailers shrieked with urgent requests for blood donations.
Mahmoud Abu Hashem (35) said the scene was horrifying. "There was one person with his intestines coming out. Another had blood covering his face and you couldn't even make out his features."
Another demonstrator, Osama Riyashad (23), was still trembling as he left the area 20 minutes after the attack, his jeans and beige sweatshirt drenched in the blood of those he had tried to assist. "We were heading into the Tel Sultan neighbourhood and \ tanks were in front of us and we were surprised by the heavy gunfire because we were not armed," he said.
The casualties overwhelmed Rafah's Abu Yousef Al Najar hospital, with chaotic scenes as frantic relatives crammed into its narrow corridors to inquire about loved ones.
With local medics reporting 45 injured in the attack, eight critically, the 50-bed hospital had to set up an open-air ward in a driveway. The 12 metal-framed beds quickly filled up with patients, while 19 others were transferred to another hospital further north.
The strike has raised to 33 the two-day Palestinian death toll in the Rafah area, which is close to Gaza's southern border with Egypt.
Demonstrators insisted that the Israelis gave no warning signal before opening fire on the crowd, which included a small number of armed men.
However, the Israeli army, which is investigating the incident, said its forces issued warnings. The first was by firing a helicopter missile, directed, it said, into an open area away from the crowd, and then by machinegun fire and tank shells.
A Rafah farmer's walk-in cold room, where he usually stores carnations prior to export, has been turned into a makeshift morgue, some 12 feet wide by 20 feet long.
Yesterday morning it contained 14 shrouded male bodies laid out in two rows, some with their eyes still open and their mouths gaping. Five were wrapped in the flags of Islamic Jihad and the militant wings of Hamas and Fatah, identifying them as fighters.
By evening, 10 new male bodies, including those of three young boys killed during the demonstration, were laid out on the blood-stained cardboard-box lining on the floor.
In a garage next door, medics stood on the sandy floor strewn with shrivelled white carnation heads and, one by one, prepared the mutilated bodies for burial. They wiped the blood from the faces of the deceased and wrapped them in white shrouds.
Among them was the scrawny body of a teenage boy, Mahmoud Mansoor, who was identified by his uncle, Nidar. He died at the scene from stomach and head wounds.
"I saw him in the crowd about five metres away from me," Nidar explained. "I saw a helicopter firing something ... everyone was running everywhere. The first people were hit with a tank shell. My nephew was among those."
Back in the teeming hospital, Hani Algoul (23) was clutching a bandage covering a head wound. Asked if he had not been afraid to attend the rally for fear of an Israeli assault, he swiftly replied, "No. We are dead already."