CAIRO: Thousands of displaced Palestinians streamed back towards their abandoned homes on Friday after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect and Israeli troops began pulling back from parts of Gaza. A massive column of displaced Gazans filed north through the dust 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", said Ismail Zayda, 40, in the Sheikh Radwan area in Gaza City. "But the place is destroyed, my neighbours' houses are destroyed, entire districts have gone".
The Israeli military said the ceasefire agreement had been activated at noon local time (09:00 GMT). Israel's government ratified the ceasefire with Hamas in the early hours of Friday, clearing the way to partially pull back troops and fully suspend hostilities in Gaza within 24 hours. Israeli hostages held there are to be freed within 72 hours after that, in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.
The first phase of US President Donald Trump's initiative to end the two-year war in Gaza calls for Israeli forces to withdraw from some of Gaza's major urban areas, though they will still control roughly half of the enclave's territory. Once the agreement is operating, trucks carrying food and medical aid will surge into Gaza to help civilians, hundreds of thousands of whom have been sheltering in tents after Israeli forces destroyed their homes and razed entire cities to dust.
In Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, some Israeli troops pulled back from the eastern area near the border, but tank shelling was heard, according to residents. In Nusseirat camp in the centre of the enclave, some Israeli soldiers dismantled their position and headed east towards the Israeli border, but other troops remained in the area after gunfire was heard in the early hours of Friday.
Israeli forces pulled out from the road along the Mediterranean coast into Gaza City, where hundreds of people had gathered hoping to return to the enclave's main urban centre which has been under Israeli assault for the past month. Gunfire nearby made many reluctant to move and only a few were attempting to cross on foot, residents said.
Separately, the UN children's charity Unicef called on Friday for all crossings for food aid into war-shattered Gaza to be opened, saying deaths among children could rise given their immune systems have been badly compromised. "The situation is critical. We risk seeing a massive spike in child death, not only neonatal, but also infants, given their immune systems are more compromised than ever before", said Unicef spokesperson Ricardo Pires.
The United Nations plans to ramp up its delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, where some areas are experiencing famine, in the first 60 days of a ceasefire in the enclave, a top UN official said on Thursday. Nutrition support is the main priority, Unicef said, with 50,000 children at risk of acute malnutrition and in need of immediate treatment. Pires said children's immunity was low because "they haven't been eating properly and recently at all for way too long". "With children, they need to have the right vitamins and the nutrients to develop and be able to cope with temperature changes, or virus outbreaks", he added. — Reuters
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