A huge column of Palestinians walked north along the coastal road overlooking the beaches toward Gaza City, which had been pounded just days earlier in one of Israel’s most ferocious assaults of the genocidal war.
"More than half a million people have returned to Gaza (City) since yesterday," said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for the civil defence.
'Destruction, destruction'
The withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from some areas, announced at 0900 GMT on Friday, set the clock running on a 72-hour deadline for Hamas to release the captives, ending on Monday morning.
"We will continue to work responsibly with the mediators to ensure that the occupation is bound to protect the rights of our people and end their suffering," Palestinian resistance groups Hamas and Jihad said in a joint statement.
Trump told reporters on Friday he believed the ceasefire would hold, arguing that both sides were "tired of the fighting", and confirming his plans to travel to Israel and mediator Egypt this weekend.
At Al-Rantisi hospital, a facility for children and cancer patients, AFP footage showed wards reduced by Israeli bombardment to heaps of overturned metal beds, gaping ceilings and scattered medical equipment.
"I don't know what to say. The images speak louder than any words: destruction, destruction, and more destruction," said Saher Abu Al-Atta, a resident who had returned to the city.
With the United Nations having declared famine in the City due to the Israeli blockade just before the outset of the latest Israeli assault on Gaza City, aid agencies are hoping the ceasefire will allow them to surge in aid.
The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says it has been given the green light by Israel to deliver 170,000 tonnes of aid under a response plan for the first 60 days of the truce.
"The most necessities are still urgently needed in Gaza: medical equipment, medicines, food, water, fuel, and adequate shelter for two million people who will face the approaching winter without a roof over their heads," said Jacob Granger, Gaza coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
'Ghost town'
Men, women and children navigated streets filled with rubble, searching for homes amid collapsed concrete slabs, destroyed vehicles and debris.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said last month that 1.9 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
While some returned in vehicles, most walked carrying belongings in bags strapped to their shoulders.
Sami Mousa, 28, returned alone to check on his family's house.
"Thank God... I found that our home is still standing, though it has suffered some damage that we can repair," he told AFP.
Nonetheless, the destruction in Gaza City left him shocked.
"It felt like a ghost town, not Gaza," Mousa said.
"The smell of death still lingers in the air," he added, vowing to rebuild.
In the south, people made their way through the dusty wasteland that was once Gaza’s second-largest city, Khan Younis, which Israeli forces had razed earlier this year. Most moved in silence, Reuters reported.
A middle-aged man, Ahmed al-Brim, was pushing a bicycle with bundles of scrap timber tied to the front and back: his family would need the firewood to cook. It was all they had been able to recover from the ruins of their home.
"We went to our area. It was exterminated. We don't know where we will go after that," he said.
"We couldn't get the furniture, or clothes, or anything, not even winter clothes. Nothing is left," he told Reuters.
Israel has killed at least 67,682 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, and wounded more than 170,000 others, in what the International Court of Justice deemed as acts of genocide in January 2024.
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