Gaza City  - The streets of Gaza City are almost empty. After five days of ferocious Israeli airstrikes which have not let up, those who do venture into the exposed outdoors do so to buy bread or stock up on groceries.

Schools have been cancelled and shops are closed, save for a few grocery stoors and bakeries.

A long queue of perhaps 250 people wait in wet and windy weather outside one bakery in western Gaza City's Rimal neighbourhood. A man in his 40s slips a youth at the head of the queue a small bribe to get him his loaf of bread without waiting in line. The baker keeps his door closed and two men at the entrance who allow in one client at a time, to avoid chaos.

"I didn't have bread for two days and look at this queue. It gets longer day after day and we are not only lacking bread, but also many other types of food, including flower and milk," says Abdullah Wadi, 36.

But what affects him most, he says, is the relentless fear and uncertainty amid the air raids, which have thus far killed more than 390 Palestinians and injured hundreds.

The majority are members of Hamas' armed wing and security forces, but according to the UN at least one-fourth are civilians who happened to be living or passing close by to the Hamas offices, buildings, training camps, blacksmith rocket workshops and warehouses being targeted in this densely-populated coastal enclave.

"We want to feel secure and safe in our houses and in the streets," says Wadi.

Imad Suleiman, a father of three, says he sleeps on matresses on the kitchen floor with his wife and children, keeping the windows open despite the cold and rain so that no shards might fly inside if shattered by a blast.

"The kitchen is the safest place," he figures, explaining that while the bedrooms and his living room face the street - where a car might be targeted - the kitchen faces civilian buildings where no Hamas commanders are known to live.

The 38-year-old looks tense as he stands outside the doorstep of his building, discussing the situation in Gaza with neighbours.

After sunset, Gaza City becomes a true ghost town, plunged into near complete darkness with only the blue and red emergency lights of ambulances penetrating the night blackness, as do the sounds of all- out war: Sirens, the buzz of pilotless reconaissance aircraft, the roar of F16 warplanes and the booms of explosions, sometimes far, sometimes near.

Israeli naval shelling of Hamas outposts and open areas along the coast and inland can also be heard from the nearby beach of this western Gaza City area.

Some 700,000 Palestinians living in Gaza City and its surroundings have been without electricity since Sunday, meaning many buildings also have no tap water as pumps have stopped operating because of the power blackout.

"I haven't showered in three days," sighs one Gaza resident. If the Israeli ground troops invade, they will be defeated and run away because of the smell of the tens of thousands of other Gaza City residents who have not done so either, he joked.

With the Israeli offensive - aimed at curbing daily rocket and mortar attacks from the strip by Palestinian militants - in its fifth day Wednesday, goods such as petrol and cooking gas which were thus far smuggled in via tunnels under the border with Egypt are becoming more and more scarce.

While a 13-kg container of cooking gas cost some 370 Israeli shekels (some 100 US dollars) before last Saturday, now the price has gone up to 420 shekels. And hundreds line up at one gas station in Gaza City which still has some Egyptian-smuggled petrol left.

"We are not leaving our houses, because we are afraid to be hit if we go out," says Fathi Sabbah, an unshaven, tired-looking 45-year-old teacher who did not bother to change out of his bedcloths as he stands at the entrance of his building.

"You never know when and where the next strike will be." (dpa)