JERUSALEM/CAIRO >> Thousands of displaced Palestinians trekked over the wastelands of Gaza to return to the ruins of their abandoned homes today, after a ceasefire took effect and Israeli troops began pulling back under the first phase of an agreement to end the war.

A huge column of people filed on foot north along the coastal road overlooking sandy beaches towards Gaza City, the enclave’s biggest urban area, which had been under attack just days ago in one of Israel’s biggest offensives of the war.

“Thank God my house is still standing,” Ismail Zayda, 40, said in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City. “But the place is destroyed, my neighbours’ houses are destroyed, entire districts have gone.”

In the south, people picked their way through the dusty moonscape that was once Gaza’s se

See Full Page