GAZA CITY, 19 January 2008 — The man awoke before dawn to the roar of tanks, bulldozers and helicopters. By nightfall his son and 18 others had been killed in the deadliest Israeli assault on Gaza in more than a year.

“At night there is no noise in this area because everyone is asleep,” said the 53-year-old, asking to be identified only as the father of his 24-year-old son Ahed Ashur, killed during the Israeli attack.

“But we heard the planes, the tanks, the bulldozers... and we knew they had come,” he added.

Tuesday’s attack marked a serious escalation on Israel’s part. All but two of the Gazans killed that day fell in Ashur’s village of Zeitun — a collection of squat concrete tenements nestling among olive groves on the edge of Gaza City.

The Israelis moved in just before dawn, with special forces soldiers in civilian clothes knocking on doors, shoving their way inside and silently taking up positions on the roofs of the buildings, residents said.

Minutes later helicopters swooped in as bulldozers carved wide dirt roads through the nearby orchards so tanks could avoid the roads and the threat of mines, they said.

As the growling of tank engines echoed through the winter night the men of the village seized their weapons and headed for the fields as women and children stayed inside, crouched on the floor away from windows, they said.

“Our weapons are old but we grab whatever we have,” said Faraj Samuni, a 22-year old fighter. “When we hear them bulldozing the land what are we supposed to do? It’s our livelihood,” he said.

As they ran into the streets Israeli snipers on rooftops opened fire, killing several Palestinians, witnesses said.

Samuni’s 52-year-old uncle was one of the first to fall. Eyewitnesses said he dropped his weapon and raised his hands into the air before he was shot.

“It was an execution. He was one of the first to be killed so we could not recover his body until hours later. When we found him his arms were frozen in place, raised above his head,” Samuni said. “He was just defending his land.”

The massacre has sparked warnings from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that it could sink the peace efforts he and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert officially revived in late November after a seven-year freeze.

The people of Zeitun do not see peace on the horizon. “There is no hope here, so the people join the resistance,” said Silmi Salama, 55, who lost a son and a nephew — both aged 20 — in Tuesday’s fighting. His eyes are red and weary, but the tears have dried.

“Look at these kids,” he said, gesturing to a group of wide-eyed boys perched on plastic chairs beneath a canopy of green Hamas banners and posters of martyrs.

“They see the fighting, they see the people dying, and then they want to take up weapons and join the resistance.”