GAZA CITY // The death toll in Gaza passed 1,000 on Saturday as a temporary truce allowed people to recover more than 100 bodies and possessions in the rubble of residential areas that were devastated over the last week by Israeli bombardments.
The 12-hour humanitarian ceasefire, which took effect at 8am, was later extended by Israel for another four hours, amid pressure from western and Arab diplomats for a longer truce.
The US secretary of state John Kerry and foreign ministers from Britain, Germany, Italy, Qatar and Turkey, as well as an EU representative, met in Paris on Saturday to try to broker a lasting peace.
“We all call on parties to extend the humanitarian ceasefire,” France’s foreign minister Laurent Fabius said after the meeting.
“We all want to obtain a lasting ceasefire as quickly as possible that addresses both Israeli requirements in terms of security and Palestinian requirements in terms of socio-economic development.”
Hamas, the Islamist group that governs Gaza and is demanding that Israel life its blockade of the territory as condition for ceasefire, made no immediate response from to either the diplomats’ call or to the Israeli truce extension.
However, the temporary truce allowed Palestinian emergency services and residents to enter areas that had for days been too dangerous to go into.
Palestinian health official Ashraf Al Qedra said 132 bodies were recovered from the rubble of neighbourhoods devastated by Israeli bombardment and fighting between troops and Gaza militants.
Residents of the Shujaieh area east of Gaza City, where thousands fled last Sunday and Monday, returned to find homes, businesses and mosques reduced to piles of debris.
Where his home once stood, Mahmoud Jundia found a pile of twisted steel, chunks of concrete, shredded mattresses and scattered possessions.
“It’s completely destroyed,” Mr Jundia, 40, said in disbelief.
The Israeli air raid that demolished the four-storey building left a three-metre-deep crater nearby and sheared off the facades of adjacent buildings.
Structures in the area that were not destroyed were damaged by artillery fire that punctured walls and left half-metre-deep divots in streets. Power cables were entangled in the trees mangled by shrapnel.
At least 75 people were killed in Shujaieh over two days of some of the fiercest fighting seen since Israel launched its offensive on Gaza on July 8. That number was expected to rise as emergency services used heavy construction machinery to search for bodies in the rubble on Saturday.
Apart from those killed, more than 6,000 Palestinians have been injured over the past 19 days. The Israeli army said 40 of its soldiers had been killed, while two Israeli citizens and a Thai immigrant worker died in attacks on Israel.
Nearly 166,000 Palestinians have sought shelter at United Nations facilities, the UN Relief and Works Agency said on Saturday, their homes either destroyed or unsafe to live in because of the fighting.
Hajj Abu Adel, 64, cried as he described seeing his home of 24 years.
“It’s destroyed! It’s gone!”
About 80 members of his family had fled Shujaieh to apartments in the Rimal area of Gaza City last Sunday, hoping that they would be able return their homes. Now, Mr Abu Adel, who is retired, does not know what they will do next.
“We are weak people. Why are they attacking us? We are not Hamas. We are not Islamic Jihad,” he said of the Palestinian militant factions fighting Israel.
Walking past women with sacks of salvaged possessions on their heads, Umm Mohammed Jundia said she had tried to reach her home on a section of Shujaieh’s Muntar Street that is about a kilometre from the Israeli border, but incoming tanks turned her and scores of neighbours back.
Still, she was defiant. “We didn’t reach our homes, but even if Israel kills a thousand of us, we will not leave. This is our homeland,” she said as walked out of the neighbourhood with her 21-year-old son, Khalil.
In other areas of Gaza, such as the northern farming village of Beit Hanoun, residents who fled the fighting returned to similar scenes of destruction. For many, there was nothing to return to, their homes destroyed by an escalation of Israeli attacks in the area over the last 36 hours.
Some who tried to reach the area Beit Hanoun were also turned back by Israeli tanks, which rumbled into border areas inside Gaza despite the humanitarian pause.
Majdi Al Wahidi, a paramedic, sped out of the area in an ambulance after seeing four tanks, about 200 metres ahead of him, kicking up plumes of dust.
“We were trying to reach the bodies of three people who were stuck under the rubble,” he said. “We weren’t able to get them.”
Back in Shujaieh, Mr Jundia searched the rubble of his home for any possessions he could find. There was not much, except for the damaged passport of his 23-year-old nephew, Ayed, who joined him in searching the rubble. The document that was flung several metres away from the site.
“We were looking for a bed, some blankets. But it’s destroyed,” Mr Jundia said.
“I don’t know what we’ll do next.”
hnaylor@thenational.ae
* With reporting by Agence France-Presse
