"Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed," the Lord warns Jonah in this Sunday's first reading. As Israel pulled its troops out of Gaza and an uneasy cease-fire between Hamas and Israel took hold this week, the world got its first close look at the destruction the three-week campaign caused in Gaza.

In Gaza City, tank shells and aerial bombardment turned homes and office buildings into heaps of concrete. Orange and olive groves were flattened. The parliament building and other targets of Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships were reduced to piles of debris.

Destruction in some areas left streets that resembled a moonscape. With Israeli tanks now gone, donkey carts hauled produce and firewood through streets littered with rubble and broken glass.

The Israeli offensive left a total of 1,284 Palestinians dead and 4,336 wounded, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. The rights group said 894 of those killed were civilians. The Palestinian bureau of statistics reported 4,100 homes totally destroyed and 17,000 others damaged in the offensive.

The death toll in Gaza has provoked international outrage. In Israel, however, the war had strong backing and was seen as a legitimate response to Hamas militants who now have one-eighth of Israel's population within rocket range. At least 13 Israelis died during the 22-day conflict.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon left the region early Wednesday after touring Gaza and southern Israel. He accused Israel of using "excessive force" in the conflict and called for an investigation into the Israeli shelling of U.N. compounds in Gaza during the fighting, which he termed "outrageous." He also called militant rocket attacks against Israel "appalling and unacceptable."

Source: Articles by Amy Teibel, Ibrahim Barzak, and Christopher Torchia for the Associated Press
and by Mai Yaghi for Agence France Presse