Representational.
Gaza City: The halt in the war driven by the ceasefire has allowed Palestinians to return to their ruined homes. Searching for their loved ones, they pulled out 135 bodies from the rubble on Saturday, Al Jazeera reported.
Medical officers had informed that 19 people were killed in Israeli air strikes on Friday, when US President Donald Trump had said back on Wednesday that Hamas and Israel had agreed on a ceasefire. The Friday strikes indicate that Israel, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, decided to keep attacking the war-torn enclave as far as they can.
UN humanitarians stated that displaced Palestinians started moving north again just minutes after the ceasefire in Gaza went into force. Following news of the truce to be passed, civilians tried to move north, but Israeli tanks blocked Al Rashid Road along the coast, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Friday, according to Xinhua news agency.
Al Jazeera reports that almost nothing remains of Gaza City due to the relentless Israeli bombardment of the region for the past two years. There is no functioning infrastructure, no clean water, no electricity, but the skeletal remains of what once were homes.
"Some of the people who have already managed to reach Gaza City reported that they arrived back to find their homes had sustained further damage," OCHA said. The office said the world body and its humanitarian partners are ready to immediately scale up the humanitarian response, IANS reported.
"After two years of war, the rehabilitation of infrastructure in Gaza is urgently needed to enable recovery," said OCHA, appealing to all leaders backing the ceasefire to help secure the conditions to carry out unimpeded humanitarian operations.