Israeli restrictions on the entry of heavy machinery are crippling Gaza City’s efforts to clear debris and rebuild critical infrastructure, the city’s mayor says, as tens of thousands of tonnes of unexploded Israeli bombs threaten lives across the Gaza Strip.In a Sunday news conference, Mayor Yahya al-Sarraj said Gaza City requires at least 250 heavy vehicles and 1,000 tonnes of cement to maintain water networks and construct wells.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listAl Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from az-Zawayda in Gaza, said only six trucks had entered the territory.At least 9,000 Palestinians remain buried under the rubble. But the new equipment is being prioritised for recovering the remains of Israeli captives, rather than assisting Palestinians in locating their loved ones still trapped beneath rubble.“Palestinians say they know there won’t be any developments in the ceasefire until the bodies of all the Israeli captives are returned,” Khoudary said.Footage circulating on social media showed Red Cross vehicles arriving after meetings with Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, to guide them to the location of an Israeli captive in southern Rafah.An Israeli government spokesperson said that to search for captives’ remains, the Red Cross and Egyptian teams have been permitted beyond the ceasefire’s “yellow line”, which allows Israel to retain control over 58 percent of the besieged enclave.Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman, said Israel spent two weeks insisting that Hamas knew the locations of all the captives’ bodies. Advertisement “Two weeks into that, Israel has now allowed …
