(11 Jul 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Shijaiyah neighbourhood, Gaza City, Gaza Strip – 11 July 2024
1. Various of people walking near destruction
2. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Sharif Abu Shanab, Shijaiyah resident:
++SOUNDBITE PART OVERLAID++
"My house had four floors, and I can’t enter it. I can’t take anything out of it, not even a can of tuna. We have nothing, no food or drink. They bulldozed all the houses, and it is not our fault. Why do they hold us accountable for the fault of others? What did we do? We are citizens. Look at the destruction around you. There is no house or anything left for us. Where do we go and to whom? We are thrown in the streets now, we have no home or anything, where do we go? There is only one solution and that is to hit us with a nuclear bomb and relieve us of this life."
3. Various of people walking past destruction, inspecting rubble
STORYLINE:
Palestinians returned to scenes of destruction in Gaza City’s Shijaiyah neighborhood after Israeli troops withdrew following a two-week offensive.
Civil defense workers said that so far they had found the bodies of 60 people in the rubble.
Families who had fled the assault ventured back into Shijaiyah to see the condition of their homes or salvage whatever they could.
Nearly every building was flattened to rubble for block after block, leaving giant piles of concrete and twisted rebar.
Here and there, a few stories of gutted concrete frames still stood.
People on bicycles or carts made their ways down dirt paths where the streets had been bulldozed away.
Sharif Abu Shanab found his four-story family building collapsed by the Israeli offense.
“I can’t enter it. I can’t take anything out of it, not even a can of tuna. We have nothing, no food or drink,” he said.
Since fleeing the district, his family sleeps in the streets.
"Where do we go and to whom?…We have no home or anything,” he said in despair.
“There’s only one solution and that is to hit us with a nuclear bomb and relieve us of this life," he added.
The Israeli military has carried out offensives in Shijaiyah several times in the 9-month-old war to battle Hamas militants.
Its latest assault began in late June, when it said it was pursuing militants who had regrouped in the district.
The assault sent some 80,000 people fleeing the district, most into nearby areas, and it is not known how many people remained in the district during the fighting.
The Israeli military said in a statement Wednesday evening that its operations in Shijaiyah had ended.
It said its troops had killed dozens of militants and destroyed eight tunnels in the area.
Its claims could not be independently confirmed.
Gaza’s Civil Defence organization said that during Israel’s offensive, its emergency crews had largely been unable to respond to calls for help from residents in destroyed buildings.
After the Israeli withdrawal, its crews entered and recovered 60 bodies, it said, adding that the search was continuing.
More bodies were believed buried under rubble, but the organization has little heavy equipment to clear debris.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ October 7 attack in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.
Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,300 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
It does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
===========================================================
Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/
You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/3efb1a7850ae4e009eee8b7470961408
Author: AP Archive
Go to Source
News post in July 16, 2024, 9:04 pm.
Visit Our Sponsor’s:
News Post In – News
