Residents returning to the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya on Friday said they had expected major destruction but were still shocked by the level of destruction they saw after three weeks of Israeli attacks on the densely built-up area.
“The destruction is indescribable,” said Mohammed Awais, who returned to his home in Jabalia with his family on Friday. “We cannot comprehend what we are seeing.”
He said he and his family walked for nearly an hour in scorching heat along destroyed roads, which were blocked by piles of rubble from homes and shops destroyed by Israeli forces, making it impossible for vehicles to pass.
As he walked, he passed rescue workers carrying stretchers carrying the bodies of the injured and dead. Some bodies were found on the road, others had been dug out of the rubble and had already begun to decompose, Awais, the social media marketer, said.
“Even ambulances cannot pass through there to transport the wounded and martyrs,” he said of Jabaliya's streets.
Israeli forces said on Friday they had ended their offensive in the eastern town of Jabariyah, recovering the bodies of seven hostages, killing hundreds of fighters and destroying several miles of an underground tunnel network.
Satellite images taken by Planet Labs in late May show the scale of destruction in the southern part of the town and near the market.
Imagery from April showed that some buildings had already been destroyed in the area prior to the latest Israeli attacks, but by late May, far more buildings in the area appeared to have been destroyed and nearly all vegetation destroyed.
Awais and his family are among the few residents who still have somewhere to go. Their house is only partially damaged, and on Friday they began clearing away collapsed walls, broken wood and glass and pieces of broken furniture to make it habitable again. But their family-run supermarket, which was forced to close in December by the Israeli blockade of Gaza, has been completely destroyed, he said.
“Debris is everywhere,” he added.
The Israeli military said on May 11 that it had resumed attacks in Jabaliya as Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that led the Oct. 7 attack, seeks to rebuild its infrastructure and operations in the area. At the time, Hamas accused Israel of “escalating attacks against civilians across Gaza” and vowed to continue fighting.
Israel invaded northern Gaza for the first time after weeks of heavy air raids on the Strip following the Oct. 7 attack. Its forces have launched multiple deadly attacks on Jabaliya, and many of its residents who survived attacks in the early months of the war thought they were safe from another Israeli attack.
“Residents are coming back with tears in their eyes,” said Gaza-based journalist Hosam Shobat. “All we see is rubble, destruction and wreckage. And more carnage.”
“Residents have returned to find things no one could have imagined: the destruction of businesses, infrastructure and shelters that had housed thousands of displaced people,” he added.
Jabaliya is often referred to as a camp because it was founded over 70 years ago by Palestinian refugees who were expelled or forced to flee their homes in what is now Israel when the state of Israel was founded. They were never allowed to return, and Jabaliya has grown into a community inhabited by refugees and their descendants.
A video recorded by Shbat on Thursday showed the ruins of Jabaliya around him, with fires still smoldering in the remains of a four-story building behind him.
“It's indescribable,” he said in an interview. “The occupying forces deliberately destroyed all the basic necessities of life.”