Although the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas has temporarily stopped, families traumatized by the war have little hope of returning to normal life.
Surviving the Israeli air strikes, what remains of the people of Gaza City are ruined buildings and the loss of loved ones.
“We no longer recognize our own city. The Israeli army has redrawn the map of Gaza,” the reporter of Guardian in Gaza opened their paper. No longer recognizing his own city This little place is so distorted that the previous map of its roads and landmarks is now useless. On the streets, crater-like bomb craters were scattered. Debris lay scattered on both sides of the road, or sometimes blocked the roads. The famous buildings here no longer exist. 11 days of shelling has displaced the city. The aerial attacks caused the ground to shake violently, to the point that at some bomb sites, buildings seemed to be pulled to the ground rather than being hit from above. The Al-Jalaa Tower in Gaza City, where Al Jazeera and the Associated Press were located, was leveled by an Israeli missile. Photo: REX. On one street, the curving walls of a kindergarten lean down at an angle until they disappear completely. Nearly a week after the attack, large concrete mounds still line Al-Wehda Road. A 7-story building is now just a giant pile of rubble on the corner of the street. In a house, all that remains is a stairway among the dust. Across the street are the ruins of another building. “It’s a very old medical clinic, possibly the oldest in Gaza,” said Abdel-Latif al-Hajj, director general of international cooperation at the health ministry in Gaza. “. Al-Hajj said the building is Gaza’s main Covid-19 testing center. “Anyone can imagine what would happen if we stopped testing,” he said. In addition, war means that thousands of displaced people are now crowded together, which can speed up disease transmission. The 11-day conflict between Israel and Hamas has left more than 250 people dead, the vast majority of them Palestinians. Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against militia targets in Gaza, while Hamas has fired more than 4,000 rockets towards Israel. “The Al-Wehda Carnage” According to the Guardian , Al-Wehda Street, is the main street in the center of Gaza City. At one end of Al-Wehda, Gaza’s largest medical facility, Shifa Hospital, is home to many survivors. Amjed Murtaja, 40 years old, lying on a hospital bed, legs covered with scratches. He said he was in his apartment on the fourth floor of the al-Wehda building when the bomb hit the balcony. “The building shook. My only thought at that time was to get to my wife and children,” he said. Just as Murtaja ran to another room and was just in time to hug his family, a second bomb fell, causing the entire structure to collapse. “We fell together,” he said. People in Beit Hanoun, Gaza return to their homes after the truce. Photo: Anadolu Agency. After landing, Murtaja’s hand was sandwiched between patches of cotton wool. They were stuck for about four hours, before neighbors and rescuers dug down and pulled them out. His wife Suza broke her back. In the same building, several members of the Al-Auf family, including one of Gaza’s most famous doctors, once the head of the anti-Covid-19 task of Shifa hospital, also died. Mr Murtaja said that while he was trapped, he could hear the screams of neighbors who were also trapped in the rubble like himself. Murtaja’s wife, Suza, is in the same hospital, but in a different women’s ward. Lying in an IV hospital bed, she said that after the sudden tremor, she was disoriented and at first thought she had been knocked over by a cupboard. One hand was stuck, the other hand held the phone and turned on the light, only to find that the building had collapsed. During the four hours she was trapped, she tried to coax her 2-year-old to sleep, but debris kept falling and waking him up. Israel said Thursday’s attack on Al-Wehda was aimed at destroying a vast network of tunnels it called the “Metro”, because it believed Hamas was hiding its military resources. The military said it had no intention of knocking down the building. So far, there has not been any clear evidence that Hamas is hiding what is in this tunnel system. The shelling on Al-Wehda Street was the deadliest attack in Gaza in the 11-day Israeli-Hamas conflict. Photo: AP. Nearly a week after the attack, a sign was erected in front of the building, bearing the names of those who died and the words “Al-Wehda massacre”. It was considered one of the deadliest attacks in Gaza in the 11-day Israeli-Hamas conflict, claiming the lives of 42 people. According to the United Nations, violence in Gaza has destroyed nearly 260 buildings. 53 schools, 6 hospitals and 11 health care centers were damaged. Nearly 80,000 people are displaced in the region, and about 800,000 have little access to tap water. The strip’s two million residents live inside what they call the “world’s largest prison,” with unemployment rates over 50%, health care systems collapsing, water sometimes poisoned and power is cut off continuously. Gaza Strip in ruins as seen from satellite Satellite images show the severity of damage in the Gaza Strip during more than 10 days of intense fighting.
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