The United Nations refugee works agency has urged donors to provide another $25 million to rebuild Palestinian homes wrecked in three years of Israeli-Palestinian violence in the Gaza Strip.
"We are appealing to the donors to allow us to do a little more," Peter Hansen, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency serving Palestinian refugees, said at the opening of a housing project in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis.
The orange-painted homes were built at a cost of some $2.7 million for 474 Palestinians whose houses have been destroyed in Israeli military raids in the Khan Yunis refugee camp since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000.
Mr Hansen singled out the latest destruction of homes in Rafah, on the Gaza border with Egypt, where the Israeli military has knocked down buildings it claims are used to hide gunmen or tunnels used to smuggle weapons into Gaza.
"From a narrow security point of view they [Israel] might have a point, but from a humanitarian point of view, one has to ask whether whatever security is gained by this kind of destruction is in any proportion to the human suffering," Mr Hansen said.
An Israeli army spokesman said: "We are sorry for the difficulties that civilians living in Rafah encounter."
A statement from the UN agency released during Hansen's visit said that it has built some 1,838 shelters for some 14,000 Palestinians left homeless throughout the Gaza Strip since the violence began. But the agency needs $25 million to build 1,139 more homes for other Palestinians left homeless, the statement added.