"When the siren sounds, we have 30 seconds to run to the bomb shelter," said Leah Malul, a resident at Israel's southern city of Ashkelon.

Malul works at Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, a coastal city located only 20 km from the Gaza strip and a popular target of rockets from the Palestinian side.

Since last Friday, schools were closed and commercial activities halted in the city after it has been hit by dozens of rockets fired by militants in Gaza.

"We can hear the sirens almost all day long, and we have to lead the patients into and out of the shelters again and again," Malul said.

More than 200 missiles and mortar shells fired from Gaza at the Negev city of Beersheba, coastal Ashkelon and Ashdod as well as other areas since last Friday, when conflicts between Israel and Palestinians started to escalate.

"Our hospital has a very big emergency room, separated merely by cloth curtains instead of walls, so we can transfer our patients in the shortest time possible after the siren sounds," Malul said.

In a bid to end four days of cross-border rocket and retaliation attacks, a shaky, partially undeclared cease-fire went into effect overnight Monday between Islamic Jihad rocket squads in the Gaza Strip and Israel.

However, continuous exchanges of rocket attacks between Israel and Palestinian militants since the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire left many wondering just when the first half of the term "cease-fire" would actually begin.

Besides causing casualties and damage, the rocket exchanges also traumatized people emotionally.

"I am afraid, terrified," Naomi Maximov, a religious woman in her late 60s told Xinhua in her sickroom in Barzilai Hospital.

She said dozens of missile alerts since last week alone have left her traumatized, and left her a heavily bandaged leg.

Her apartment building doesn't have a bomb shelter, so when there were missile warning sirens she and her neighbors took refuge in the stairwell -- the innermost and safest place in the structure. But during one alert, she tripped and fell running for cover, causing her injury and hospitalization.

"Every night, and I mean every night, I prepare a nightgown, a hair covering, slippers, and then get into bed. The moment there's a siren, I run," she said.

Her broken hip will heal soon, but her post traumatic stress disorder brought on by the around-the-clock sirens and explosions may not.

"I'm always stressed, breathless... What will be, what will be, what will be? I'm always tense," she said.

Barbara Carter, a Beersheba resident, was so distressed over the rockets fired into her city since last Friday that she broke into tears while recalling her experiences.

"What I feel right now is just totally, totally drained," Carter said after Wednesday's salvo.

"We were eating pizza when the siren sounded, and when we came back upstairs, I said I felt like I was going to throw up," said Carter, who is a retired American immigrant.

Reporters visiting the region Wednesday saw glaziers replacing blown-out shop windows from Grad strikes just days earlier, as well as rocket-pockmarked kibbutz kindergartens with shrapnel-holed inch-thick security glass windows.

One of three Grad rockets fired by Gaza militants at Beersheba Wednesday evening evaded the Israeli army's Iron Dome anti-missile system, wounding one resident. The other two were downed in open areas outside the city.

Israel Air Force aircraft later hit a rocket launching pad in northern Gaza and an arms smuggling tunnel in the south, the army said, confirming direct hits. There were no reports of Palestinian casualties.