Khan Yunis, Gaza:
Safa Qandil returned to Khan Yunis in southern Gaza on Monday to discover she no longer has one.
Thousands of displaced Gazans are trudging back through the apocalyptic landscape of the devastated city after the Israeli army withdrew on Sunday following months of intense fighting with the Hamas group.
But it often happens that their house is no longer there.
“We hoped we would find the house or its remains or take something out of it to cover ourselves,” Qandil, 46, told AFP.
“We didn't find the house,” she said.
That's not the worst part of her loss, though. Her son and his pregnant wife were killed by the Israeli army, she said.
“My tragedy is great,” she said, adding that the military also killed her daughter-in-law's “father, brother, sister, aunt and the rest of her family” in a most heinous crime.
“It's unnatural and indescribable,” she said.
“In every home there is a martyr (someone who is dead), a wounded person, words cannot describe the magnitude of the devastation and suffering we have experienced.
“We cried hysterically at the sight of the blood.”
'Nothing intact'
Such is the destruction of the city that many residents returning from neighboring Rafah, where more than 1.5 million Gazans have sought shelter, are struggling to find their way.
“We don't recognize places because nothing looks the same,” said Salim Sharab.
Others told AFP that the smell of death hangs in the air as people dig bodies from the rubble.
The city's civil defense on Monday appealed to the United Nations for hydraulic equipment to reach the bodies, most of which it said are in a serious state of decomposition.
Sharab still held out hope that his home had survived the fighting and bombing that leveled entire parts of a city once home to nearly 400,000 people.
That was the 37-year-old's desire to return: “even if my house is destroyed, I will put my tent on top of it,” he said.
Aisha Al-Hoor's hopes have already been dashed. “My house was completely destroyed and is in ruins. My heart was consumed with pain, in every corner of my house there were memories… the scale of the destruction is indescribable.
“The military has left nothing intact for the people,” she said. “The anger and pain in our hearts will never be forgotten.”
Mohammed Dahalan was one of the lucky ones. His apartment was intact, even though his neighbors had lost their walls and windows.
However, the Israeli army left behind “explosive materials… we don't know how to deal with them.”
Muhammad Abu Diab said he was in shock. “There's nothing left. I can't bear the sight of it. I go to my house and I know it's destroyed,” the 29-year-old said.
'I'm going to search through the rubble until I find clothes to wear. I'm going back and living next to the rubble of my house, even though it's in a tent. We're exhausted.'
The Gaza war was sparked by the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, Israeli figures show.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 33,207 people, mostly women and children, in Hamas-held territory, according to the Health Ministry.
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