Nidal al-Mughrabi
The Independent (Reuters) / January 22, 2025
Some estimate the bodies of around 10,000 Palestinians killed in the war are yet to be found.
The ceasefire may have brought a fragile peace to Gaza, but for Mahmoud Abu Dalfa, the war’s devastation continues.
He tirelessly searches for the remains of his wife and five children, buried under the debris of their home since an Israeli airstrike in December.
Thirty-five members of Abu Dalfa’s extended family perished when their building in Gaza City’s Shejaia suburb was hit, he said. Amid the ongoing bombardment, only three bodies were recovered. Now, Abu Dalfa faces the agonising task of retrieving the rest.
“My children are still under the rubble,” he said. “I am trying to get them out.”
He described the immense challenges, hampered by the scale of destruction and a lack of necessary equipment. “The civil defence came, they tried, but…we don’t have the equipment here… We need excavators and a lot of technical tools.”
Among the lost are his wife and all five of his children – three daughters and two sons, including a set of triplets.
Burials are usually carried out within a few hours of death in Muslim and Arab communities, and failure to retrieve bodies and ensure dignified burials is agonizing for bereaved families.
“I hope I can bring them out and make them a grave. That’s all I want from this entire world. I don’t want them to build me a house or give me anything else. All I want is a grave for them – to get them out and make them a grave,” said Abu Dalfa.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service and medical staff have recovered around 200 bodies since the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel came into effect on Sunday, halting a 15-month conflict that has killed more than 47,000 Gazans.
The war in Gaza was triggered when Palestinian Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies. At least 94 of those hostages remain in Gaza.
Mahmoud Basal, the head of the service, said extraction operations have been challenged by the lack of earth-moving and heavy machinery, adding that Israel had destroyed several of their vehicles and killed at least 100 of their staff.
Basal estimates the bodies of around 10,000 Palestinians killed in the war are yet to be found and buried.
A U.N. damage assessment released this month showed that clearing over 50 million tonnes of rubble left in the aftermath of Israel’s bombardment could take 21 years and cost up to $1.2 billion.
As hundreds of truckloads of aid flowed into Gaza since Sunday, officials from the Palestinian Authority, rivals to Hamas, held meetings with European officials to arrange to assume responsibilities at two vital crossing points with Egypt and Israel.
A Palestinian official familiar with the matter said Egypt sent bulldozers and some engineering vehicles to carry out repairs to the road on the Gaza side of the border that had been damaged by Israel’s ground offensive.
Like Abu Dalfa, thousands of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are searching for the bodies of relatives either missing under the rubble or buried in mass graves during Israeli ground raids.
Rabah Abulias, a 68-year-old father who lost his son Ashraf in an Israeli attack, wants to give his son a proper grave.
“I know where Ashraf is buried, but his body is with dozens of others, there is no grave for him, there is no tomb stone that carries his name,” he said via a chat app from Gaza City.
“I want to make him a grave, where I can visit him, talk to him and tell him I am sorry I wasn’t there for him.”
Nidal al-Mughrabi is a senior Reuters correspondent
