AP PHOTOS: Fear and grief grip Gaza anew amid familiar glare

To the outside world, the scenes of rocket fire, bombing raids and angry protests in the Middle East this week may have looked familiar. To the people of Israel and especially the Gaza Strip, they were anything but routine. Families once again fled or found themselves homeless, anguished parents mourned dead children and journalists evacuated offices before they were destroyed as the Islamic militant group Hamas and the Israeli military sought to inflict as much damage on the other as they could this week - before the fighting intensified further or they were pressured into a cease-fire. The Gaza side, which is controlled by Hamas, absorbed the overwhelming brunt of the death toll: 145 people, including 41 children and 23 women, as of Saturday night, according to the Health Ministry of the narrow, crowded territory where 2 million Palestinians live. Those killed included a family of six on Friday and 10 members of the same family on Saturday. In Israel, where cities with mixed Arab and Jewish populations have seen nightly communal violence, eight people have died, including two children. The regional director for UNICEF reported Saturday that half of the children killed in Gaza were under 10, while dozens of other Palestinian children were wounded in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.