Gazans return to assess damage amidst ceasefire

Gaza City, Palestinian Territories, May 2 1 : Thousands of displaced Gazans started going back to their homes to check for damage and Israelis returned to normal life on Friday after a ceasefire appeared to take hold following 11 days of deadly fighting.

In Jerusalem, Israeli police cracked down on stone-throwing protesters, an AFP journalist and Israeli police said, two weeks after similar events led to the violent escalation between both sides.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s bombing campaign of Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip was an “exceptional success”, after the enclave's Islamist rulers Hamas had claimed “victory”.

In Gaza, thousands of Palestinians trickled out of the schools were they had taken shelter, a UN official said, while the civil defence said it was working with what little means it had to remove the rubble and rescue any survivors.

Nazmi Dahdouh, 70, said the Israeli military destroyed his home in Gaza City in an air strike on Monday.

“We don’t have another home. I will live in a tent on top of the rubble of my home until it is it rebuilt,” the father of five said.

Raed al-Dahshan, deputy head of Gaza’s civil defence, said authorities were “continuing to look for the missing under the debris”.

Before dawn, Palestinians honked their horns and some fired shots in the air minutes after the truce started, while in the occupied West Bank, joyful crowds also took to the streets.

With no alerts sounding in Israel to warn of incoming Hamas rockets, calm reigned across much of the Jewish state with people heading to outdoor cafes in Tel Aviv.

The truce brokered by Egypt, that also included Gaza’s second-most powerful armed group, Islamic Jihad, was agreed following mounting international pressure to stem the bloodshed. —