A Glimpse Inside a Devastated Gaza
As we traveled through central Gaza on Monday, every village bore the marks of war. Some buildings had collapsed entirely, their floors stacked on top of the other like piles of books. Tower blocks, missing whole sections, stood precariously. The house in Bureij was missing an outer wall. A grove of trees next door had been leveled, the plants ripped from their roots and the land churned into mud.
Ultimately, all the buildings near the house would most likely be destroyed, a senior commander said, once the army exploded a Hamas tunnel network that he said lay beneath them.
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To accompany the soldiers, Times journalists agreed not to photograph a digital map within the Israeli military vehicle or the faces of some special forces fighters. The Times did not allow the Israeli military to screen its coverage before publication.
The Times accepted those conditions to secure rare access to wartime Gaza, which has been off-limits to foreign journalists except when embedded with the Israeli military or, in one case, an Emirati aid group.
