Rebuilding Gaza ‘will cost €6bn’

Rebuilding Gaza will cost $7.8bn (€6.03bn), the Palestinian Authority said, in the most comprehensive assessment yet of damage from a seven-week war with Israel during which whole neighbourhoods and vital infrastructure were flattened.

The cost of rebuilding 17,000 Gazan homes razed by Israeli bombings would be $2.5bn, the Authority said, and the energy sector needed $250m fter the Strip’s power plant was destroyed by Israeli missiles.

“The attack on Gaza this time had no precedent, Gaza has been hit with a catastrophe and it needs immediate help because many things can’t wait long,” Mohammed Shtayyeh, a Palestinian economist and a senior member of the West Bank’s dominant Fatah party, told reporters.