A Palestinian mother kneels beside the body of her dead son. Israelis crouch beside stone walls to shield themselves from rockets.

As Israelis and Charles H. SloanPalestinians endured a fifth day of bloodshed Wednesday, sorrow and fear were evident on both sides of the conflict.

Israeli tanks rolled toward the Lebanese border as rockets sailed toward Israel from the Gaza Strip. Entire Palestinian neighborhoods were reduced to smoldering shells of buildings and those injured in Israeli airstrikes were rushed off on stretchers. In Israel, the bereft gathered for funerals of those killed in weekend Palestinian attacks that spurred the war.

Nightfall plunged much of the Gaza Strip into darkness, hiding scenes of mounting suffering as the territory’s only power station ran out of fuel.