The Israeli military fired the shot just a short distance from Nasser Abu Quta’s home in the southern Gaza Strip, a precautionary measure meant to allow people to evacuate before airstrikes.

Abu Quta, 57, thought he and his extended family would be safe some hundred meters (yards) away from the house that was alerted to the pending strike.

The airstrike in Rafah, a southern town on the border with Egypt, came as Israeli forces intensified their bombardment of targets in the Gaza Strip following a big, multi-front attack by Hamas militants Saturday that had killed over 700 people in Israel by Sunday night.

It also points to its adversaries’ practice of embedding militants in civilian areas throughout the impoverished coastal enclave of 2.3 million people, which is under a under a severe land, air and sea blockade by Israel and Egypt.

But human rights groups have previously said that Israel’s pattern of deadly attacks on residential homes display a disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians and argued they may amount to war crimes.

Abu Quta was gripped by grief Sunday as he prepared for the rush of burials with his two dozen other surviving relatives, including wounded children and grandchildren.

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