Palestinian woman carries her wounded son after the Israeli attack in Beit Hanun. (Reuters) Click for more Photos

JABALYA — "We fled the house only to be hunted outside," Asma al-Athamna, 14, cried in her hospital bed, her body lacerated by shrapnel wounds and her eyes red from weeping.

Israeli artillery shells crashed around Athamna's house, dismembering her mother and sister, and killing uncles and cousins.

"We were asleep and we were awakened by shells hitting the house of my uncle next door. Then the windows to our house were blasted away," the weeping Palestinian girl told Reuters.

"The shells killed my mother and sister and wounded all my siblings," she said in a shaking voice and a heavy heart.

Thirteen of Athamna's extended family were killed in the Israeli shelling of the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.

As she spoke, doctors and nurses at the hospital tended to treat her shrapnel wounded.

Downstairs, dozens of frantic Palestinians sought news of loved ones.

In all 19 Palestinians, including seven children and four women, were killed in their sleep in the Israeli bombardment.

Medics threw buckets of water into ambulances, trying to wash the blood away.

Doctors gloves, covered in blood, lay on the ground.

No Escape

Athamna's mother and sister were torn apart by the Israeli shells as they sought to flee the Israeli hell.

"People outside the house called on us to flee. We ran from the house into a narrow corridor. At least eight shells landed in the street," she recalled.

"We were afraid of death inside the house. But death took my mother and sister outside."

Lying next to Athamna was her two-year-old cousin, Mallak who had shrapnel wounds to the face. Doctors said both would live.

The teenager's injured father was also in the hospital.

Shops across the battered Gaza Strip closed in protest at the Israeli attack and to mourn the dead.

Funerals will be held later on Wednesday in Beit Hanun, where Israel killed at least 50 people over the past week.

More than 290 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched a wide-scale offensive in Gaza on the pretext of seeking the release of a soldier captured by Palestinian resistance groups to swap with Palestinians women and children in Israeli jails.