Tens of thousands of exhausted Palestinians were returning to their ruined homes on Saturday, a day after a ceasefire between Israel and the militant Hamas group took effect in Gaza. Reuters news agency described a huge column of people traveling on foot north along the coastal road overlooking sandy beaches towards Gaza City, the enclave's largest urban area. Until Friday afternoon, the city was the target of one of Israel's biggest offensives of the war. Gaza civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said around 200,000 Palestinians had returned to northern Gaza since the ceasefire came into effect. Gazans return to shattered homes as ceasefire takes hold 02:25 Gaza residents return to rubble "Thank God my house is still standing," Ismail Zayda said in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City. "But the place is destroyed, my neighbors' houses are destroyed, entire districts have gone." Another Palestinian, Mahdi Saqla, said his family had decided to set off north towards Gaza City as soon as they heard the news of the ceasefire. "There are no homes — they've been destroyed," he said. "But we are happy just to return to where our homes were, even over the rubble. That too is a great joy. For two years, we've been suffering, displaced from place to place." In southern Khan Younis, once the territory's second-largest city, hundreds of Palestinians returning to where their homes once stood have found wrecked buildings, rubble and destruction after Israeli troops withdrew from parts of the city.