PALESTINIANS who have returned to Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza in recent days have expressed shock at the level of destruction following a three-week Israeli military operation there against Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.
One displaced man who was among the more than 60,000 people who fled the intense battles and bombardment in the camp and its surrounding area last month said he had witnessed “horrifying scenes”.
“Even the sand beneath our feet is scorched; it’s unbearable to walk on,” he told BBC Arabic. “The streets are strewn with rubble and demolished buildings. Words fail to describe the devastation.”
The man – who asked not to be named – also said he had seen injured and dead people “lying on the ground” and that essential services and goods were not available.
“There is no electricity or water. There are no clinics or medicines,” he added. “Wells have been destroyed, shops and supermarkets demolished, and there is a shortage of food.”
The town of Jabalia and its decades-old urban refugee camp – the largest in Gaza, with more than 110,000 registered residents – witnessed weeks of devastating bombardment and fighting after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said troops had secured control over the camp at the end of December after a series of operations in which it said “many terrorists” were killed.
It subsequently scaled down combat operations across northern Gaza, declaring that Hamas’s local battalions had been dismantled. But that left a power vacuum in which the group was able to rebuild.
On 12 May, the IDF said troops were going back into Jabalia for an operation “based on intelligence information regarding attempts by Hamas to reassemble its terrorist infrastructure and operatives in the area”.
Over the next three weeks, battles raged as tanks and troops advanced into the refugee camp under the cover of intense air and artillery strikes. One military official described the fighting as “perhaps the fiercest” they had seen over the past seven months.
On Friday, the IDF announced that troops had completed their mission, having “eliminated hundreds of terrorists in intense combat and close-quarters encounters” and destroyed dozens of “terrorist infrastructure and combat compounds”.
The troops also located and destroyed more than 10km (six miles) of an underground tunnel network and retrieved the bodies of seven Israelis taken hostage by Hamas in October, it said.
