Israeli troops have pulled out of a neighbourhood of Gaza's Rafah refugee camp after killing 42 Palestinians in a six-day siege that was condemned by the international community.
Residents of Rafah's Tel Sultan district ventured onto the streets as Israeli tanks rumbled out of the area today.
An Israeli military source said the pullout was part of a "new deployment" to "ease conditions" and allow residents to leave their homes to stock up on food, water and medicine.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged to put a revised plan to evacuate Jewish settlements in Gaza to a cabinet vote by next week.
"It looks like an earthquake hit the neighbourhood," said resident Sami Fuja. "The roads are completely torn up, thousands of greenhouses were razed and many houses damaged."
Israeli troops remained in at least one other Rafah stronghold, known as the Brazil camp, where besieged residents reported a severe water shortage.
Television footage of Palestinian refugees picking through the rubble of some 35 demolished homes in Rafah sparked a world outcry and even a row inside Mr Sharon's cabinet.
Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, a Holocaust survivor, touched a raw nerve by saying the sight of an elderly Palestinian woman searching through the rubble of her home reminded him of his grandmother who died in a Nazi death camp.
He urged the cabinet to halt the demolitions and said further wreckage could force his centrist party to reconsider its participation in Mr Sharon's government.
Mr Sharon said on Sunday he was determined to push through a step-by-step plan to withdraw from Gaza and several West Bank Jewish settlements despite his right-wing Likud party's rejection of the pullout in a May 2nd referendum.
A senior official said Sharon would present an amended plan to evacuate the 7,500 Jewish settlers from Gaza in stages at the next cabinet meeting scheduled for May 30th.