First family home rebuilt year after Gaza war

For over a year Atef al-Zaza and his family have been waiting to move back into their Gaza home, flattened like thousands of others in last year's devastating war with Israel.

Now it has become the first in the ravaged coastal strip to be completely rebuilt, just in time for the wet and windy Gaza winter.

The 50-day war in July-August 2014 killed 2,200 Palestinians, 73 people on the Israeli side, and destroyed or damaged thousands of homes in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Until now the only repairs had been to buildings which were partially damaged, while the Zaza home -- in the particularly hard-hit Shejaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City -- was completely obliterated.

Since then, Atef al-Zaza, 49, and the 11 members of his family have stayed with relatives and for a while in a small rented apartment.

Now he proudly shows visitors the brand new, 160 square metre house, surrounded by the rubble of neighbours' homes yet to be reconstructed.

In Gaza, violence is never far away and a few hundred metres (yards) from the Zaza home young Palestinian stone-throwers clash daily with Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border fence.

The UN Relief and Works Agency, tasked with caring for Palestinian refugees who make up 75 percent of the strip's population, says 9,000 of their homes were totally destroyed in the Israeli bombardment and tens of thousands damaged.

Some of those now rebuilding are doing so for the third time, UNRWA spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said, referring to previous Gaza wars in 2008 and 2012.The task is fraught with obstacles; the Gaza Strip is subject to blockades by both Israel and Egypt, between which it is sandwiched.