GAZA STRIP (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Just hours after the two-week offensive on Gaza City's Shujaiya district ended, Palestinians had already found 60 bodies as they picked through the piles of concrete and dust left behind, officials in Hamas-run Gaza said Thursday.
Families of missing residents and civil defence agency crews moved in for the grim search after Israel announced late Wednesday that it had ended its operation there against Hamas.
"Once the Israeli occupation forces withdrew from the Shujaiya neighbourhood, civil defence crews, with local residents, managed to recover about 60 martyrs up to now," agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.
Some 85 percent of buildings are now "uninhabitable" and Shujaiya has been turned into a "disaster zone", he added, estimating that 120,000 people had been left homeless.
Residents who returned found a ghost town.
Sabrin Abu Asr said the district was "in ruins" as she went back to see the debris of her home.
Like most buildings, only a skeletal frame remained after two weeks of clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinian militants that forced tens of thousands of people to flee.
The rest lay collapsed in piles of crushed concrete, cinder blocks and twisted rebar.
Israeli troops launched a ground offensive at the beginning of May in the southern city of Rafah, which was then presented by Israel as the last Hamas stronghold.
But since then, clashes have increased between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters in the north and centre of the Gaza Strip.
A full evacuation order was issued for Shujaiya on June 27. Since then, Israel has warned that all of Gaza City will remain a "dangerous" combat zone.
Former residents could only bundle whatever they could salvage and seek shelter elsewhere, carrying possessions on a bike, a donkey-drawn cart or on their backs.
"Shujaiya district lies in ruins... we are devastated," said Abu Asr, who left by foot with a single can of food.
"Our plight must be felt by others. Someone needs to empathise with the people of Gaza," she added.
'DEFIES DESCRIPTION'
The Israeli military said it dismantled eight tunnels and killed dozens of militants during the operation in Shujaiya.
Israeli forces left behind a destroyed armoured vehicle, now standing between two buildings nearly flattened in the fighting. It has since been scrapped it for parts, its door and roof already gone.
Nearby, Mohamad Nairi, his hands and t-shirt covered in dust, struggled to come to terms with what happened.
"When we returned to Shujaiya district, we found immense destruction that defies description. All the houses were demolished," he said.
The fighting has now moved to the rest of Gaza City, which the Israeli army has urged residents to evacuate.
Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead.
Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,345 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory's health ministry.