Gaza City Neighborhood Left in Ruins After Israeli Withdrawal

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Gaza City Neighborhood Left in Ruins After ******** Withdrawal

Residents and rescue workers say they found dozens of bodies and most buildings reduced to ruins when they returned to the Shajaiye neighborhood in Gaza City after ******** troops pulled out this week, having fought an intense two-week battle against ****** militants there.

The offensive in Shajaiye was part of a wider ******** effort to clamp down on a renewed ****** insurgency in Gaza City, where *******’s military has reported fierce battles with armed fighters.

Palestinians returning to Shajaiye, after heeding a call by ******* to evacuate, said the neighborhood was so devastated it was uninhabitable.

“The current situation in Shajaiye today is tragic,” said Ahmed Sidu, a photographer, who went back to his home as soon as he heard that ******** forces had pulled out.

A ************ woman in Shajaiye on Thursday. The ******** military said this week that it had concluded its operation there.Credit…Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“There was only misery on people’s faces,” he added, referring to others who returned and found “no shelter and no water.”

************ Civil Defense emergency services agency said in a statement on Thursday night that their emergency and rescue crews had recovered more than 60 bodies from Shajaiye after the ******** military withdrawal.

The statement added that dozens of people remain missing and were feared to be ******* under the rubble. The raid had destroyed most of the buildings and homes that were left standing after *******’s initial invasion in October, it said. The ****** toll could not be independently confirmed.

“The Shajaiye area has become an uninhabitable area, lacking all necessities of life,” the organization said in a statement.

The ******** military reported this week that it had concluded its operation in Shajaiye, though on Friday said it did not confirm that its troops had pulled out of the neighborhood.

The military had announced the operation in Shajaiye more than two weeks ago, along with evacuation orders that

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

had pushed 60,000 to 80,000 people from areas east and northeast of Gaza City. It later expanded its ground operations and issued warnings to evacuate to other parts of the city.

On Friday, the military said that among the fighters ******* in the operation was the deputy commander of ******’s Shajaiye Battalion, Ayman Showadeh. ******** officials said Mr. Showadeh was previously “a key operative” at ******’s operation headquarters and was involved in directing the Oct. 7 ******-led ******* that set off the war in Gaza.

Karam Hassan, a Gaza City resident who went to Shajaiye to see the aftermath of the raid, said that families who had hoped to return to their residences found themselves having to stay in shelters and displacement centers because nothing was left of their homes.

“Homes are all reduced to piles of rubble, bakeries, and shops are destroyed and even the streets have been dug up,” Mr. Hassan said. “The situation is very tough and the scale of destruction is immense.”

Destroyed buildings in Shajaiye on Thursday after ******** troops withdrew.Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Sidu, the photographer, said he was among the few whose home, on the outskirts of Shajaiye, had suffered little damage, but he added he was still not sure he could stay there because all of the infrastructure had been destroyed. “How do we live without basic necessities and without water?” he said.

“There may be a relative calm now in terms of aircraft and artillery shelling,” Mr. Sidu said. “But residents were now facing “a severe shortage of potable water, internet and communications networks and were suffering emotionally.”

He said that some people whose buildings and houses were destroyed had set up tents near the rubble and were determined to stay and “create a kind of familiarity and neighborhood atmosphere that binds them together.”

******** forces have returned to clear out ****** fighters in several parts of Gaza that they had previously secured, especially in the north, as ****** has regrouped amid the anarchy of the nine-month war.

This week, the ******** military was operating in other parts of Gaza City, including the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, where ******** forces stormed a vacated ******* Nations compound, and the southern outskirts of the upscale Al-Rimal neighborhood.

************ Civil Defense said on Friday that their crews began recovering bodies from Tal Al-Hawa and the Al-Sinaa neighborhoods, as they said the ******** forces appeared to be leaving those areas as well. At least 60 corpses had been recovered, the organization said.

The ******** military did not confirm its forces were also pulling out of those areas.

The military in a statement that ******** forces had raided “a ****** combat complex embedded inside a compound previously used by UNRWA,” the main ******* Nations agency that assists Palestinians in the area. Troops were “engaged in close-quarters combat” with militants who had “fortified themselves inside,” the statement said.

A spokeswoman for UNRWA, Juliette Touma, confirmed that the facility had been evacuated in October when the war started and that the agency had “no way to verify” the ******** claims. The agency has “repeatedly called for independent investigations and queries into these allegations and any violation of international humanitarian law,” she said.

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.

— Hiba Yazbek Reporting from Nazareth, *******

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Gaza #City #Neighborhood #Left #Ruins #******** #Withdrawal

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up