SHOCKED Palestinians emerged on to the rubble-strewn streets of the Gaza Strip yesterday to recover their dead and inspect their shattered homes after Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire and Hamas a conditional week-long truce.
The 23-day death toll rose to about 1,300, including 410 children, with 5,450 wounded. The fatality figure is certain to increase as bodies are recovered from the rubble.
Women sat weeping amid the ruins of their houses. Others sifted through the debris to gather cherished belongings.
Families who fled advancing Israeli troops began returning to barely recognisable neighbourhoods to discover who had survived and who had died. “Thank God you are alive! The house can be rebuilt, God willing,” Abu Daoud Amer consoled a friend.
Hamas, eager to show it still controls Gaza, sent policemen back on to the streets – even the traffic police were out on mangled, cratered roads.
At Beit Hannoun, a farmer was killed and his son injured when inspecting their fields and a woman and her daughter were wounded when their home was hit by an Israeli shell.
Irish volunteer Caoimhe Butterly was with the Palestinian Red Crescent in the northern Jabaliya area, the site of heavy fighting, where she helped recover bodies. “Thirty-eight were brought to the Kamal Adwan hospital in the morning,” she said.
Salah Sakka, a former member of the Gaza City municipality, which serves 500,000 people, said: “Planes, drones and helicopters are overhead [creating tension]. Water and sanitation are a catastrophe. Water and sewage pipes have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people do not have tap water, 220,000 in Jabaliya alone.”
Israel has rejected accusations by human rights agencies that it has committed war crimes by attacking densely populated urban areas with destructive and toxic munitions. UN Relief and Works Agency Gaza operations chief, Irish national John Ging, asked: “Were they war crimes that resulted in the deaths of the innocent during the conflict? The question has to be answered.” – (Additional reporting: Reuters)