Thousands of Palestinians returned to their homes in the ruins of Gaza's main southern city Khan Younis on Tuesday, after Israeli forces ended a week-long incursion there which they said aimed to prevent Islamist armed group Hamas from regrouping.

Palestinian rescue workers and civilians collected dead bodies from the streets of the abandoned battle zone, bringing corpses wrapped in rugs to morgues in cars and donkey carts.

The Hamas-run Gaza media office said Israel's eight-day-long raid in eastern areas of Khan Younis killed 255 Palestinians and wounded more than 300 others. At leas 30 people remained missing.

The Israeli military said its forces killed more than 150 Palestinian gunmen during the week-long raid, destroyed militant tunnels and seized weapons.

After the Israeli forces left, people streamed back to their homes on foot and with carts carrying their belongings. Many found their houses damaged or destroyed. The Hamas media office said more than 300 homes had been hit by Israeli fire during the raid, at least 30 of them inhabited when they were struck.

Witnesses said army forces had bulldozed the main cemetery in Bani Suhaila, the town on the eastern outskirts of Khan Younis that was the main focus of the raid, as well as houses and roads nearby.

"I am coming back and I have faith in God. I don't know whether we will live or die, but it is all for the sake of the homeland," said Etimad Al-Masri, who had walked for at least five km back to her home.

"Despite the suffering, we are patient and God's willing we will have victory."

Many residents said they had been displaced from their homes several times.

"We hope there will be a ceasefire and calm. We hope that they act on a ceasefire so that we can live in security and safety," said Walid Abu Nsaira, holding some of his belongings on his shoulder as he walked back home.

As the Khan Younis assault has wound down, Israel has ordered thousands of people out of homes in al-Bureij in the central Gaza Strip, launching strikes there in apparent preparation for a new raid.

Medics said an Israeli air strike in nearby al-Nuseirat killed 10 Palestinians as they fled from Bureij on Tuesday, and another strike killed four other Palestinians inside Bureij.

Ten months into the war, Israeli forces have largely completed their storming of nearly the entire Gaza Strip and have spent the past several weeks launching new assaults on areas where they had already claimed to have rooted out Hamas. Thousands of people have been ordered to evacuate their homes, most of them previously displaced several times already.

Efforts to negotiate a ceasefire through mediators, ongoing for months, are once again faltering. On Monday, Israel and Hamas traded blame over the lack of progress.

Hamas wants a ceasefire agreement to end the war in Gaza, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the conflict will stop only once Hamas is defeated. There are also disagreements over how a deal would be implemented.

The war began with an assault on southern Israel by Hamas-led fighters who killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and captured around 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then Israeli forces have killed more than 39,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to health authorities there who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians but say more than half of the dead are women or children. Israel, which has lost around 330 soldiers in Gaza, says a third of the Palestinian fatalities are fighters.

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Destruction of Gaza water wells deepens Palestinian misery

Israel's military blew up more than 30 water wells in Gaza this month, a municipality official and residents said, adding to the trauma of airstrikes that have turned much of the Palestinian enclave into a wasteland ravaged by a humanitarian crisis.

Salama Shurab, head of the water networks at Khan Younis municipality, said the wells were destroyed by Israeli forces between July 18-27 in the southern towns of Rafah and Khan Younis.

The Israeli military did not respond to the allegations that its soldiers destroyed the wells.

It is not only ever-present danger from Israeli bombardment or ground fighting that makes life a trial for Gaza's Palestinian civilians. It is also the daily slog to find bare necessities such as water, to drink or cook or wash with.

People have dug wells in bleak areas near the sea where the bombing has pushed them, or rely on salty tap water from Gaza's only aquifer, now contaminated with seawater and sewage.

Children walk long distances to line up at makeshift water collection points. Often not strong enough to carry the filled containers, they drag them home on wooden boards.

Gaza City has lost nearly all its water production capacity, with 88% of its water wells and 100% of its desalination plants damaged or destroyed, Oxfam said in a recent report.

Palestinians were already facing a severe water crisis as well as shortages of food, fuel and medicine before the destruction of the wells, which has deepened the anguish brought on by the Gaza war, now in its 10th month.

ISRAEL SAYS WORKING ON REPAIRS

COGAT, the branch of the Israeli military that manages humanitarian activities, told Reuters it has coordinated water line repairs with international organizations and "dozens" were done in the last month including one to the northern Gaza Strip.

Other work including power repairs at a desalination plant and construction of additional lines was under way.

Hamas and other militants "have been known to attack civilian infrastructures and humanitarian aid routes, adding to the complexity and danger of delivering much-needed humanitarian aid to the region," COGAT said.

All Gazans can do is wait in long lines to collect water since U.S., Qatari and Egyptian mediators have failed to secure a ceasefire from Israel and its arch-foe Hamas. Not only is there a shortage of water, much of it is also contaminated.

"We stand in the sun, my eye hurts because of the sun, because we stand for long (hours) to (secure) water," said Youssef El-Shenawy, a Gaza resident.

"This is our struggle with non-potable water, and then there is our struggle with drinking water, which we take another queue for, that’s if it is available."

The war started on Oct. 7 when Hamas, the Palestinian militant group ruling Gaza, killed 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli tallies, and took another 250 or so to hold as hostages in Gaza, one of the most crowded places on earth.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 39,000 people and bombed much of Gaza, where functioning hospitals are scarce, into rubble, Gaza health authorities say.

Fayez Abu Toh observed fellow Gazans standing in line in the heat eager to get their hands on water. Like many Palestinians he wonders why Israel strikes targets that pose no threat to its military.

“Whoever has a bit of a sense of humanity has to look at these people, care for them and try to (impose) a ceasefire and end this war. We are fed up; we are all dead and tired. The people have nothing left," he said.

“Does this well affect the strength of the (Israeli) Defense Force? This is a destruction of the infrastructure of the Palestinian people to further worsen the situation, and to pressure these people that have no one, but God."

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