GAZA CITY — After weeks of escalating conflict in Gaza, both sides reported death tolls that made clear Sunday was the deadliest day so far in the war. The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that 87 Palestinians had died, and the Israeli military said 13 soldiers were dead.

The fighting signaled that what had begun as a limited ground invasion by Israel that started Thursday night had moved into a more extensive and costlier phase for both sides.

Most of the Palestinians were killed in an eastern neighborhood of Gaza City called Shejaiya. For the Palestinians it was the deadliest episode since Israel began its offensive on July 8 with airstrikes it says were aimed at curbing rocket fire against its cities. Since July 9, 417 people have been killed in Gaza, among them more than 100 children, and more than 3,000 injured.

Beginning at dawn on Sunday in Shejaiya, men, women and children streamed out of the neighborhood, some barefoot, past bodies of people killed by shelling. Israeli shells crashed all around, rockets fired by militants soared overhead, and occasional small-arms fire whizzed past. Black smoke rose above the city. Asked where they were going, one woman said, “God knows.”

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