Gazans returning to Jabalia describe 'horrifying' destruction

The town of Jabalia and its decades-old urban refugee camp - the largest in Gaza, with more than 110,000 registered residents - witnessed weeks of devastating bombardment and fighting after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said troops had secured control over the camp at the end of December after a series of operations in which it said 'many terrorists' were killed. It subsequently scaled down combat operations across northern Gaza, declaring that Hamas’s local battalions had been dismantled. But that left a power vacuum in which the group was able to rebuild. On 12 May, the IDF said troops were going back into Jabalia for an operation 'based on intelligence information regarding attempts by Hamas to reassemble its terrorist infrastructure and operatives in the area'. Over the next three weeks, battles raged as tanks and troops advanced into the refugee camp under the cover of intense air and artillery strikes. One military official described the fighting as 'perhaps the fiercest' they had seen over the past seven months. On Friday, the IDF announced that troops had completed their mission, having 'eliminated hundreds of terrorists in intense combat and close-quarters encounters' and destroyed dozens of 'terrorist infrastructure and combat compounds'. The troops also located and destroyed more than 10km (six miles) of an underground tunnel network and retrieved the bodies of seven Israelis taken hostage by Hamas in October, it said.