While Israeli officials say Sunday's attack by armed group from Egypt's Sinai signaled the worsening security along the border, residents of the nearby Kerem Shalom farming village say they are accustomed to threats of such kind.

"I'm not afraid of the situation on a daily basis," said Syn Levy, 42, a single mother with a 12-year-old child, who moved to Kerem Shalom several weeks ago from the city of Kfar Saba near Tel Aviv, and is trying out the rural lifestyle.

"When something happens, we look out for each other, who needs to be taken care of," she said of the latest violence.

Gazan militants in the coastal enclave about a kilometer to the north also target the area, and often fire mortar shells and Kassam rockets towards them, but which commonly fall in open areas.

When she heard three booms Sunday night, from the nearby violence, she "was panicking, because my son wasn't with me; he was somewhere in the kibbutz with friends."

She added that a kibbutz member had taken her son into a protected area during the attack.

In the Sunday night raid, several dozen heavily armed militants stormed an Egyptian border post at the Rafah crossing point, about a kilometer west of the 50-member farming community, which grows potatoes, wheat, flowers and other crops. Israeli Intelligence said the armed Bedouins were al-Qaida affiliates based in the Egyptian Sinai.

Firing rocket-propelled grenades and small arms, the Bedouins killed at least 16 soldiers and policemen, then commandeered two vehicles, one of them a Russian-made BRDM armored troop carrier. The militants tried to bulldoze one vehicle through a gate into Israel.

One vehicle, packed with more than 500 kilograms of explosives according to officials who spoke with Xinhua, blew up when it hit the gate. However, eight gunmen managed to plow the eight-wheeled military vehicle a kilometer into Israel, just bypassing the entrance road to Kerem Hashalom, where Israeli forces stopped their advance.

Israeli officials said the militants planned to perpetrate a mass-casualty terror attack against Israeli residents or soldiers in the unprecedentedly complex strike against the two neighboring countries.

But quickly deployed Israeli Air Force planes and tank-backed ground forces closed in, destroying the marauders in a deadly 15- minute hailstorm of fire, including an air-to-ground rocket, tank shells, and small-arms fire.

Eshkol Regional Council chief Haim Yellin said the event was " definitely a more unusual incident than any other we've seen here in the past."

"Although this incident is rare, unfortunately, the citizens here are used to security-related incidents and staying indoors fearing rockets or other deadly means of attack," he said.

Meanwhile, "after spending the night at a fortified area with nobody coming in or out, we were allowed to go on with our daily routines Monday morning," kibbutz member Yoav Rimon, 40, told Xinhua.

While the scorched remains of the vehicle and its bomb-blasted occupants were soon cleared away, pocked asphalt, charred bits of tires and a blown-off rear door still lay alongside the two-lane road Tuesday afternoon.

Andy Breakell, 58, an immigrant from Manchester, England, has been a farmer at Kerem Shalom since 2006. He told reporters that he was watching sprinter Usain Bolt at the London Olympics while the violence nearby occurred.

"There were mortars being fired, nothing special about that," he said, laconically, but continued to say "as it carried on and on and on, we realized it was more serious than usual."

He noted that "everybody knows what to do in these situations, and as long as everybody was in a bunker or a protected room in their own home ... we called round and knew everyone was safe."

But, he said, he was not aware of the extent of the infiltration until the next morning. "If the troop carrier had turned left into our street and broken into the kibbutz... " he said, without finishing the sentence.

Breakell pointed out that Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was abducted by Hamas militants from Gaza in 2006 via a tunnel that came up in the fields where he grows potatoes.

However, "overall it's very peaceful here," said Levy, a work- at-home software engineer with a start-up firm in the center of the country. Security officials send residents text message to alert them to take cover whenever there is trouble.

For Levy, hunkering down in the shelter, which was also a pub, "actually was a nice experience with ... because everybody was very supportive to me who was a new member."

On Wednesday morning, Egyptian helicopter and troops raided areas where militants hid out in the northern Sinai, including the main town of el-Arish, several dozen kilometers to the west of the Israeli border.

Egyptian security officials believe there are some 2,000 militants in the area, and the Egyptian troops are working to hunt them down.

Israeli official expressed cautious support for Egypt's decision to go after both militants and to seal off the smuggling tunnels leading to Gaza.

"I hope it is not just an emotional reaction that will hold for two or three days," said Yom-Tov Samia, who headed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Southern Command from January 2001 to December 2003.

"I hope it is part of a plan the Egyptian government has decide on, and they will have all the support from Israel, from the IDF. We will help them with whatever we can help, to do it," said Samia, a 29-year career officer.