(LONDON) — The Israel Defense Forces are investigating reports Israeli troops who were occupying a key sewage treatment plant in Gaza set it ablaze amid a drawdown of their forces from much of the enclave’s territory last week as a part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal.
The Sheikh Aljin sewage treatment plant, located to the southeast of Gaza City, was badly damaged in the reported fire, according to Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility.
The CMWU told ABC News that an in-person investigation of the site on Tuesday, Oct. 14, confirmed that four of the plant’s six biological treatment towers had suffered massive fire damage.
According to the CMWU, the plastic cells and hydraulic systems inside the treatment towers had been destroyed and their concrete walls cracked by the fire.
Photos taken by the CMWU’s staff after the fire and provided to ABC News reveal the damage to the plant. The photos show multiple treatment towers with charred walls, their interiors burnt out and strewn with garbage. The treatment towers are scattered with Hebrew-language graffiti, including one reading, “I’ll be back soon.”
Before the devastating fire, the plant had the capacity to serve some 700,000 of Gaza’s approximately 2 million residents, the utility said.
The fire was first reported by Drop Site News, who uncovered two photos appearing to show IDF troops posing in front of burning structures at the Sheikh Aljin sewage plant to the southeast of Gaza City.
The date and authenticity of the photos could not be immediately verified but the structures seen in the images match those seen in the images provided by the CMWU.
The IDF told ABC News it was aware of the incident, and it is being reviewed.
It was not immediately clear when the fire was first set. NASA’s FIRMS system first detected a fire at the plant at 1:34 p.m. local time on Saturday, Oct. 11. And a satellite photo from Planet Labs taken on the same day shows smoke rising from one of the facility’s six biological treatment towers.
The IDF appears to have withdrawn from the site before Oct. 11 as Israeli troops vacated much of the Gaza Strip after a ceasefire came into effect on Oct. 10.
But earlier satellite images points to an IDF presence at the site in the days before the fire, experts say.
Tony Reeves, founder of the private intelligence firm MAIAR, said that it was difficult to make a definitive assessment, this image from Sept. 28 appeared to show objects consistent in their size and shape with military armored vehicles, as well as plowed earth like the kind often used by militaries for fortification.
Reeves said images from Oct. 7 and 11 appeared to point to a drawdown at the site with fewer vehicles present.
Jeremy Binnie, a defense analyst with the intelligence firm Janes, also told ABC News that while specific vehicles could not be identified the Sept. 28 and Oct. 7 images point to an IDF presence at the site.
The scene, Binnie said, “is consistent with an IDF temporary defensive position in the Gaza Strip as they routinely build protective berms and we would not expect civilian vehicles to be at a disused military position at this time.”
The CMWU said that owing to the destruction of another treatment plant at Bureij near Gaza’s border with Israel, before the fire the Sheikj Aljin plant had become the last remaining sewage treatment facility set up to serve much of central Gaza and Gaza City.
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