Gazans return to 'indescribable' destruction of Khan Yunis

han Yunis (Palestinian Territories): Safa Qandil returned home to Khan Yunis in southern Gaza on Monday only to find that she no longer has one.

Thousands of displaced Gazans have been trudging back through the apocalyptic landscape of the devastated city after the Israeli army pulled out on Sunday following months of fierce fighting with Hamas militants.

But as often as not it is to find their home is no longer there.

"We hoped we would find the house or the remnants of it or take something from it to cover us," Qandil, 46, told AFP.

"We did not find the house," she said.

That is not, however, the worst of her loss. Her son and his pregnant wife were killed by the Israeli army, she said.

"My tragedy is great," she said, adding that the army also killed her daughter-in-law's "father, brother, sister, aunt and the rest of her family in a very heinous crime."

"It is unnatural and indescribable," she said.

"In every house there is a martyr (someone dead), a wounded person, words cannot describe the magnitude of the devastation and the suffering we experienced.

"We cried hysterically at the sight of the blood."

'Nothing intact'

Such is the destruction of the city that many residents returning from neighbouring Rafah, where more than 1.5 million Gazans have been sheltering, have struggled to find their way around.