Beit Hanoun, Gaza Strip: Residents of this town in northern Gaza dug through the rubble of their damaged homes and UN schools on Tuesday, after Israeli troops pulled out following a two-day incursion.
About 15 tanks moved out of populated areas of Beit Hanoun on Monday night and headed toward the nearby Israeli border.
Five helicopters hovered overhead, firing flares and machine guns to provide cover for the ground forces.
Israeli troops clashed with Palestinian fighters in the town on Monday, killing two and wounding four others, hospital officials said.
That raised the two-day death toll in the area to at least six Palestinians, most of them fighters, the officials said.
The operation in Beit Hanoun was the latest stage of Israel's wider offensive in the Gaza Strip.
In Beit Hanoun, Israeli troops, tanks and bulldozers caused heavy damage to houses, farmland, electric poles and underground water pipes during their two-day operation.
They also broke into a walled compound of four vacant UN schools and damaged three of them.
"It's very depressing to see this done to a school [compound] in this sort of deliberate way," said Karen Abu Zayd, the UN Relief and Works Agency commissioner who visited the site.
"I'm particularly sad because this was the year we had hoped to improve the living conditions in the [refugee] camps and build additional schools and classrooms."
An Israeli army spokesperson said it had not received any complaints from the United Nations about damage to the compound.
Mahmoud Yazji, 30, and members of his large family dug through their damaged home.
Israeli tanks had knocked down a surrounding wall and destroyed the house's kitchen and downstairs bathroom.
"The Israelis are not just targeting militants, they are attacking everything: our houses, trees, economy, even my bathroom," he said.
Mayor Mohammad Nazaek Kafarna estimated the damage to the town and its surrounding villages to $7 million (Dh25.7 million).
Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians, some fainting in the midday heat, flocked to a Gaza crossing point when Egypt and Israel reopened it for the first time in three weeks.
Most Palestinians were returning to Gaza, and many said they had run out of money and been exhausted by having to wait for weeks on the Egyptian side of the border.
"I will never, never, never come to Egypt again because of the pain and suffering I have endured with my wife," said Aboul Khair, 50, a barber who was returning to Khan Younis with his wife.
