The United Nations’ humanitarian aid chief surveyed the widespread destruction in Gaza on Saturday while Israel confirmed the return of another hostage’s remains amid a fragile truce now in its second week.
In a short convoy of white U.N. jeeps, relief coordinator Tom Fletcher and his team wound their way through the twisted rubble of shattered homes to inspect a wastewater treatment plant in Sheikh Radwan, north of Gaza City.
"I drove through here seven to eight months ago when most of these buildings were still standing and, to see the devastation, this is a vast part of the city, just a wasteland, and it's absolutely devastating to see," he told AFP.
The densely packed cities of the Gaza Strip, home to more than two million Palestinians, have been reduced to ruins by two years of Israeli bombardment. Since October 2023, Israeli attacks have killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children, and rendered it largely uninhabitable.
Just over a week since U.S. President Donald Trump helped broker a truce between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas, the main border crossing to Egypt has yet to be reopened, but hundreds of trucks roll in daily via Israeli checkpoints and aid is being distributed.
Hamas has returned the final 20 surviving hostages it was holding and has begun to hand over the remains of another 28 who died.
On Friday night, it turned over a set of remains identified by Israel as Eliyahu Margalit, 75, who died in Hamas’ October 2023 attack.
Surveying the damaged pumping equipment and a grim lake of sewage at the Sheikh Radwan wastewater plant, Fletcher said the task ahead for the U.N. and aid agencies was a "massive, massive job".
The British diplomat said he had met residents returning to destroyed homes trying to dig latrines in the ruins.
"They're telling me most of all they want dignity," he said. "We've got to get the power back on so we can start to get the sanitation system back in place.
"We have a massive 60-day plan now to surge in food, get a million meals out there a day, start to rebuild the health sector, bring in tents for the winter, get hundreds of thousands of kids back into school."
According to figures supplied to mediators by the Israeli military's civil affairs agency and released by the U.N. humanitarian office, on Thursday some 950 trucks carrying aid and commercial supplies crossed into Gaza from Israel.
Relief agencies have called for the Rafah border crossing from Egypt to be reopened to speed the flow of food, fuel and medicines, and Türkiye has a team of rescue specialists waiting at the border to help find bodies in the rubble.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the cease-fire but is under pressure at home to restrict access to Gaza until the remaining bodies of the hostages taken during Hamas's attacks have been returned.
On Saturday, his office confirmed that the latest body, returned by Hamas via the Red Cross on Friday night, had been identified as Margalit, the elderly farmer who was known to his friends at the Nir Oz kibbutz as "Churchill".
In a statement confirming he had been identified and his remains returned to his family, Netanyahu's office said "we will not compromise... and will spare no effort until we return all of the fallen abductees, down to the last one".
Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said on Friday that the group "continues to uphold its commitment to the ceasefire agreement... and it will continue working to complete the full prisoner exchange process".
Under the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, negotiated by Trump and regional mediators, the Palestinian group has returned all 20 surviving hostages and the remains of 10 out of 28 deceased ones. Phase one included the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. The plan also envisages the rebuilding of Gaza and the establishment of a new governing mechanism without Hamas.
