The remains of thousands more people are believed to be buried in buildings destroyed and damaged in Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, authorities say.
Palestinians in northern Gaza are holding funeral ceremonies for about 100 people, including 60 children, whose remains were recovered from the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood.
The remains were carried on Sunday by family members from Zeitoun to al-Ma’madani cemetery in central Gaza City for burial, according to Al Jazeera’s correspondent at the scene, Ghazi al-Aloul.
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Civil defence crews and family members had spent weeks digging through the ruins of homes hit during Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, which began in October 2023.
Many of the victims were part of the extended Malaka family, which alone lost 55 members.
Al-Aloul said families had waited a long time to be able to bury their loved ones in “known, proper cemeteries”. He said that the chance to bury the remains of family members was “not available to every family”, noting that Israeli forces had destroyed and dug up cemeteries elsewhere in Gaza during the war.
Al-Aloul said the remains, though wrapped in shrouds resembling intact bodies, were often only fragments.
“These are bone remains and remnants of belongings that may have been found on the bodies, especially the children’s,” he said, adding that no complete bodies had been recovered from the site because “the Israeli occupation has prolonged this process, and continues to prolong it and prevent it from being completed quickly”.
Raed al-Dahshan, head of Gaza’s civil defence service, told Al Jazeera his teams had formulated plans to carry out recovery operations for thousands more missing bodies, but said the work was being held back by a shortage of heavy machinery.
“We don’t have equipment, we don’t have protective equipment” for rescue workers, he told Al Jazeera.
Dahshan said the recovery of an estimated 8,000 bodies still believed to be under rubble could be completed in about 90 days with proper equipment, but “if that equipment is barred from entering Gaza … this work will continue for years”.
He said his agency had submitted a detailed list of needed equipment to international institutions and was willing to have that machinery remain under international control rather than with the civil defence directly.
He said crews needed large excavators, personal protective equipment and search equipment to locate remains urgently.
On identifying remains, he said crews rely on survivors and neighbouring families to establish who was in a building and where they were at the time of the strike, supported by a team of engineers who sort and document findings in the field. He said Israeli forces’ failure to warn residents before strikes meant “dozens, even hundreds” of homes still required excavation.
Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN human rights office in the occupied Palestinian territories, told Al Jazeera that the scenes were a reminder of “the brutality of this conflict”, noting some of the remains dated back to November 2023.
“Thousands of people are still languishing under this rubble … We’re talking about areas that may be under Israeli military control, 70 percent of Gaza – there’s difficulty accessing these areas to extract these bodies.”
“Accountability must happen … It’s essential that we preserve the evidence we’ve been able to obtain during this sensitive period.”
Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 73,651 Palestinians have been killed and 174,592 wounded since October 2023.
Similar recovery operations in recent weeks have retrieved more than 100 bodies of people from the Abu Shariah and Hassaniya families who were killed in a single strike, as well as more than 500 bodies from the Al-Taj tower site, officials and activists said.
