Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 33,207 people in Gaza
Khan Younis, Gaza:
On Monday, Safa Qandil returned to her home in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, only to find she was gone.
Israeli troops withdrew on Sunday after months of fierce fighting with the Hamas group, leaving thousands of displaced Gazans trudging back in an apocalyptic aftermath in the devastated city.
But often they find their home no longer exists.
“We hope to find the house or its remains or take something from it to cover us,” Qandil, 46, told AFP.
“We didn’t find the house,” she said.
However, this was not the worst loss she had suffered. She said her son and pregnant wife were killed by Israeli forces.
“My tragedy is enormous,” she said, adding that the army also killed her daughter-in-law’s “father, brothers, sisters, aunts and her family, a very heinous crime.”
“It’s unnatural and indescribable,” she said.
“In every house there is a martyr, a wounded person and words cannot describe the magnitude of the devastation and pain we have experienced.
“We cried hysterically when we saw the blood.”
“Everything is intact”
The city was so devastated that many residents returning from neighboring Rafah were struggling to find their way out. Rafah More than 1.5 million Gazans have taken refuge in Rafah.
“We couldn’t recognize the place because nothing looked the same,” Salim Shalabh said.
Others told AFP the smell of death hung in the air and people were digging for bodies among the rubble.
The city’s civil defense authorities appealed to the United Nations on Monday for the use of hydraulic equipment to dispose of the bodies, which they said were mostly badly decomposed.
Shalabh remains hopeful that his home will survive the fighting and bombing that razed the city, which once had a population of nearly 400,000.
Such is the 37-year-old’s desire to return, “Even if my house is destroyed, I will pitch my tent on it,” he said.
Aisha Hur’s hopes have been dashed. “My house was completely destroyed and in ruins. My heart is filled with pain and there are memories in every corner of my house… The scale of the destruction is indescribable.”
“The military left nothing intact for the people,” she said. “The anger and pain in our hearts will never be forgotten.”
Mohammad Daharan is one of the lucky ones. While his neighbor lost walls and windows, his apartment remained intact.
However, Israeli forces “left explosives inside…and we didn’t know what to do with them.”
Muhammad Abu Diab said he was shocked. “There is nothing left. I cannot bear this sight. I am going back to my house, knowing it is destroyed,” the 29-year-old said.
“I’m going to search through the ruins until I find something to wear. I’m going to go back and live next to the ruins of my house, even if it’s in a tent. We’re exhausted.”
Israeli data shows that Hamas launched an attack on Israel on October 7 that killed 1,170 people, mostly civilians, triggering the Gaza war.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 33,207 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-controlled region.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
