By Vi Vian Yee and Ameera Harouda
The Israeli military said Tuesday that it had begun withdrawing some soldiers from parts of the Gaza Strip, part of a planned pullout of about five brigades, but its forces continued pounding the enclave with airstrikes, according to residents.
Witnesses and Palestinian news reports said that Israeli forces were withdrawing from several parts of northern Gaza, including Jabalia, a refugee camp dating back to 1948 that has grown into a dense, bustling town, as well as the area north of the Shati refugee camp, the area around Al-Rantisi Hospital and other neighborhoods of Gaza City.
Hearing the news, some Palestinians who had fled the north earlier in the war returned to check on their homes and neighborhoods. They found their old streets transformed, said Abed Karin Khadar, 24, who went with his family back to Al Juron, a neighborhood in Jabalia, to see if he could grab some clothing from their home.
He described the scene in an audio message Tuesday. Buildings lay in pieces, he said. Streets were flooded and pocked with deep craters.
Bodies lay here and there, rotting, he said.
As they walked down the streets, they could hear people calling from under the rubble of destroyed buildings, pleading, “We’re down here,” Khadar recalled. But they could do little with their bare hands, and civil defense teams could not get close because the roads were blocked with debris.
When he reached home at last, he said, he found it burned down.
“They just destroy whatever they can,” he said. “It’s a ghost town. Houses are burned. Roads are damaged. They leave homes burned, ruined.”
And the risks to civilians remained. In southern Gaza, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Tuesday that Israeli shelling had struck its headquarters, in Khan Younis, killing at least five displaced people who had been sheltering in the area, including a 5-month-old infant, and that three people had been injured, including one of the organization’s first responders. The Israeli military did not immediately comment.
Khadar said a rocket landed less than 100 yards from him, killing one person.
“This announced withdrawal is just for media consumption, but effectively, they are still striking the area,” Khadar said of the Israeli military.
Israel had announced Monday that it would begin withdrawing several thousand troops from Gaza, at least temporarily, in an effort to shore up the country’s economy, which has slumped as reservists across the country stop working to take up arms. Analysts viewed the move as a sign of Israel’s impending shift to a more limited, targeted phase of the war, a pivot the United States has been urging it to make.
But Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, indicated Tuesday during a visit to Gaza that the war would continue. He said Israeli forces would keep “holding a finger on the trigger” in northern Gaza, where he said the military had destroyed Hamas battalions but would continue targeting the several thousand fighters it estimates remain there.
“We are not giving up,” he said.
The military said Tuesday that it had conducted targeted operations over the last few days across Gaza and killed dozens of Hamas fighters.
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