Monday, May 19, 2025

Gazans return to a Khan Younis devastated past recognition


After Israel pulled again its forces from Khan Younis, the most important metropolis in southern Gaza, this weekend, civilians started to return. However following 4 months of struggle, the place they discovered was not the one they left.

“I couldn’t acknowledge the place,” a Palestinian humanitarian employee, who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of he was not licensed to talk with reporters, mentioned Monday in a cellphone interview. “Even the streets are not there.”

His home, he mentioned, had “vanished.” As an alternative had been piles of rebar and cement. Nothing was salvageable: The home, he estimated, had been hit by an airstrike after which bulldozed. Different homes had been burned.

Residents returned to a devastated Khan Younis on April 7, after Israel withdrew all however one brigade from southern Gaza. (Video: Reuters)

On Sunday, the six-month anniversary of the assault on Israel on Oct. 7 and the beginning of the devastating struggle that adopted, the Israel Protection Forces mentioned in an announcement that it was withdrawing all however one brigade from the south of Gaza, marking an obvious turning level within the battle.

But for residents of Khan Younis making the journey residence, that is no return to normalcy. Greater than 33,000 individuals in Gaza have been killed within the battle to this point, in line with the Gaza Well being Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants however says the vast majority of the useless are ladies and youngsters. Satellite tv for pc imagery from the United Nations has discovered 12,710 buildings within the metropolis have been destroyed, second solely to Gaza Metropolis.


Sources: Injury evaluation of Copernicus

Sentinel-1 satellite tv for pc knowledge by Corey Scher of CUNY

Graduate Heart and Jamon Van Den Hoek of

Oregon State College, Microvvsoft Maps.

Sources: Injury evaluation of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite tv for pc

knowledge by Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Heart and Jamon Van

Den Hoek of Oregon State College, Microsoft Maps.

Sources: Injury evaluation of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite tv for pc knowledge by Corey Scher of CUNY

Graduate Heart and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State College, Microsoft Maps.

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Sources: Injury evaluation of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite tv for pc knowledge by Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Heart and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State

College, Microsoft Maps.

Gaza’s Civil Protection Ministry mentioned Monday that it had discovered 28 decomposing our bodies round Khan Younis to this point.

Nasser Hospital, the primary medical web site within the metropolis, was nonetheless standing, however barely, its inside devastated. Rubble and crushed, overturned vehicles and vehicles lay strewn within the surrounding streets.

The humanitarian employee had borrowed his brother-in-law’s jeep to drive into Khan Younis from the coastal city of Mawassi on Sunday, the place he, his spouse and 6 youngsters had fled final month after fearing that their earlier place of refuge, Rafah, can be Israel’s subsequent goal.

He mentioned that the dimensions of the harm had made navigation tough. To succeed in his space, he stopped different vehicles and passersby to crowdsource the correct routes to take. The previous roads he had identified so effectively had been destroyed by airstrikes or blocked by rubble, he mentioned. He took a circuitous path and infrequently discovered new quasi-roads cast by Israeli tanks.

When he arrived, his coronary heart sank. “It was utterly tousled,” he mentioned of his neighborhood: “Not solely demolished however distorted in a approach that nobody might acknowledge it.”


Supply: Maxar Applied sciences

Supply: Maxar Applied sciences

Supply: Maxar Applied sciences

Supply: Maxar Applied sciences

Khan Younis was residence to roughly 400,000 individuals. It served as an financial middle for southern Gaza and had a wealthy cultural historical past.

Town turned swollen with displaced individuals after Israel warned these residing in Gaza’s densely populated north to evacuate on Oct. 12, main a whole lot of 1000’s to heed the warning. Two weeks later, after pounding airstrikes within the north, Israel launched its floor invasion.

Khan Younis was important to Israel’s army targets. It was the birthplace of Yehiya Sinwar, the chief of Hamas within the Gaza Strip. Israeli officers had mentioned that town was a stronghold for Hamas, and instructed Sinwar was hiding in Khan Younis.

On Dec. 4, Israeli forces started pushing farther south into Gaza, telling the civilians who had fled to Khan Younis to now head on once more, and most went to the southern border metropolis of Rafah.

Roughly half of Gaza’s prewar inhabitants has been condensed into Rafah, surging the small metropolis’s prewar inhabitants with tent cities. However even amid warnings of a possible Rafah offensive by the Israeli army — a plan Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned in remarks Monday should proceed “in an effort to obtain victory” — some are too scared to return.

“We’ve got really lived the worst days of our lives” because the struggle began, mentioned Muhammed Al-Atrash, a 44-year-old father of three from Khan Younis now residing in a tent in Rafah. “We get every thing by means of struggling. We rely on canned meals for our weight loss plan. We stay in fixed nervousness and worry.”

The army exercise in Khan Younis has left the household residence “unlivable,” Al-Atrash mentioned Sunday. “The doorways and home windows had been all damaged. The partitions are collapsing. We don’t stay in security in any respect.”

The humanitarian employee mentioned that touring again to his residence in Khan Younis precipitated appreciable private ache and he couldn’t bear to return once more.

“My children and spouse insisted to go at present,” he mentioned on Monday. “They requested me to accompany them, and I mentioned no.”

He tried to forestall them from going. They employed a taxi anyway. “Nothing good can come out of it,” he mentioned.

Jennifer Hassan and Lior Soroka contributed to this report.

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