Gazans return to ruins as Israeli forces pull back

Hamas must disarm ‘the easy way’ or ‘the hard way’, says Netanyahu

- ALEXANDER CORNWELL & NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI

Displaced Palestinians walk with their belongings along the coastal road in the central Gaza Strip towards Gaza City on Friday

(PHOTO: AP/PTI)

Thousands of displaced Palestinians trekked over the wastelands of Gaza to return to the ruins of their abandoned homes on Friday, after a ceasefire took effect and Israeli troops began pulling back under the agreement to end the war.

A huge column of people filed on foot north along the coastal road overlooking sandy beaches towards Gaza City, the enclave's biggest urban area, which had been under attack just days ago in one of Israel’s biggest offensives of the war.

“Thank God my house is still standing,” Ismail Zayda, 40, said in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City. “But the place is destroyed, my neighbours’ houses are destroyed, entire districts have gone.”

In the south, people picked their way through the dusty moonscape that was once Gaza's second largest city Khan Younis, which Israeli forces razed earlier this year. Most walked in silence. A boy teetered under a foam mattress.