The Israeli army withdrew from the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, leaving behind the bodies of several Palestinians and a trail of destruction, the Palestinian Civil Defense Agency said on Thursday.
The Israeli army withdrew from the northern part of the camp on Wednesday following an 8-day military operation.
“Several victims were retrieved by civil defense teams, while many others are still under the rubble,” the agency said in a statement.
The civil defense agency said heavy machinery is needed to extract the bodies of dead people from under the debris of destroyed buildings.
According to Gaza's government media office, 75 people were killed, 348 injured and 100 others went missing during the Israeli operation, in addition to the destruction of 13,000 housing units in the camp.
Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas in which nearly 1,200 people were killed.
More than 33,900 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and over 76,600 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
