(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-01-24 10:17

The appearance of the fallen wall backed up that assertion. It was neatly sliced at knee-level, with the bottom section still standing and the rest toppled over.

Hamas police quickly took control of the shopping exodus, channeling the crowds through two sections of the frontier.

"Freedom is good. We need no border after today," said Mohammed Abu Ghazal, a 29-year-old out-of-work Gazan.

Children bought soft drinks and chocolate, women scooped up cheese and cleaning products, and men stocked up on cigarettes -- all expensive or simply unavailable in Gaza because of Israel's shutdown of cargo crossings.

Other Palestinians staggered over toppled metal plates that once made up the border fence, carrying TV sets, cell phones, tires and plastic bottles filled with fuel. Some brought in goats and chickens.

Four Palestinians in wheelchairs were pushed over the border, where ambulances picked them up for treatment in Egypt. At one point, a dozen people crowded around a motorcycle to lift it over a low border wall in Egypt.

Shoppers depleted stores in the border town of Rafah, prompting Ashraf el-Sayyid, an Egyptian, to ride his motorbike into the Gaza Strip -- going against both traffic and logic.

"I need to buy bread for my children," he said. "The Palestinians left us with nothing. It's true, they are dear to us, but today, they were like locusts."

Masked gunmen used 17 explosive charges before dawn to tear down the border fence -- erected in 2001 by Israel when it controlled Gaza.

After news of the breach spread, people across Gaza boarded buses and piled into rickety pickup trucks heading for Egypt. It was a rare chance to escape Gaza's isolation.

Moussa Zuroub, 28, carried his young daughter, Aseel, on his shoulders through the muddy streets of Rafah, which is divided by a wall into Egyptian and Gazan segments. "I'm coming just to break that ice -- that all my life, I'd never left Gaza before," he said.

By nightfall, more than 1,000 Gazans reached El-Arish, an Egyptian town about 37 miles south of Rafah, walking the streets and shopping in stores that stayed open late.

Mohammed Alyan, an unemployed father of six sitting at a bus stop with six friends, complained that Egyptian shopkeepers were rapidly raising prices.

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