In a violent instant on Thursday morning, a single Grad rocket from Gaza took three lives, wounded seven and plunged residents of one Israeli town into the explosive horror.

The long-range rocket, fired from Gaza, scored a direct hit on two apartments in the 4th-floor walk-up in Kiryat Malachi Thursday and killed 24-year-old Itzik Amsallem, 25-year-old Mira Scharf and 49-year-old Aharon Smadja.

"I cried all morning," Gila Yehezkeli, 19, a close friend of Sharf, told Xinhua. I grew up with her, she was like a sister to me."

Later that night, Palestinian militants in the coastal enclave fired salvo after salvo of Fagr 5 rockets towards Tel Aviv and other cities in the densely-populated economic center of the country, the latest of over 250 launched in the previous 72 hours.

Israel Air Force counter-strikes "targeted 300 terror activity sites in the Gaza Strip," the army spokesman said in a statement sent to Xinhua late Thursday. Palestinians said at least 15 militants were killed, and close to a hundred were hurt by the bombings.

Back in Kiryat Malachi, 20 kilometers to the north, friends and neighbors of the three victims milled around outside of the shattered 40-year-old building, as police, security and rescue crews assessed the extent of the damage to the structure.

The blast tore a truck-sized hole in the outer porch of the worst-hit home. Fist-sized shrapnel pockmarked the inner and outer walls, and a heavy steel apartment door was ripped off its hinges from the force of the explosion. Bloody stains marked the inner walls and stairwell.

While, outside, pastoral fields stretched towards Gaza to the south, inside, a 30-centimeter-deep carpet of masonry rubble, shattered glass, children's toys, demolished furniture and household artifacts spread across the floor. Bookshelves and glass breakfronts full of bibles and other Jewish religious books, were ripped off walls, scattering ancient Hebrew texts among the rubble.

Yehezkeli said she'd already heard of some whom the enormous blast had terrified into leaving for more northward -- and presumably safer areas.

"I know people who had suitcases and were leaving," she said, but added, "I'm not going to leave this place."

One of those who did decide to vacate the area was 22-year-old Avital Lang, who lived in an apartment nearby. "I heard a 'boom,' and the windows shattered in the room I was in; the whole apartment was full of shards," she told Xinhua. "It's a really awful feeling: for the next half hour the sirens kept blaring, the rumors spread, and the booms went on and on," she said. "The feeling is simply that we packed a few bags and were going north."

But Diaspora Affairs Minister, Yuli Edelstein, who visited the rubble-filled remains of the apartment told Xinhua that he came away strengthened by the fortitude of the residents.

"I can only say that the people here strengthened us more than we strengthened them," he said, standing near the building entrance.

Upstairs, 24-year-old Avraham Hager, who rented one of the apartments that sustained massive damage said he and his wife, like the other households, sought refuge in the stairwell as soon as they heard the "Color Red" sirens blare across the town.

He offered a militant solution in dealing with the waves of rocket attacks that have forced a million residents across Israel' s southlands to stay within 15 to 60 seconds of protected areas, paralyzing daily life and commerce.

"How do I feel?" he asked, standing in front of a shattered glass breakfront full of holy books. "We should be dealing with the Arabs the way they best understand: not by doing 'pinpoint assassinations' against individuals, but rather wipe them out the way they're trying to wipe us out," he contended.

Late Thursday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that "Israel will continue to take whatever action is necessary to defend our people."

Asserting that "no government would tolerate a situation where nearly a fifth of its people live under a constant barrage of rockets and missile fire," he said, "There is no moral symmetry; there is no moral equivalence, between Israel and the terrorist organizations in Gaza."

Meanwhile, in bomb shelters and safe rooms in Kiryat Malachi and much of southern Israel, families bedded down for another sleepless night, as Israeli jets and Palestinian rockets roared overhead.