Standing atop the rubble of his destroyed home in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Youssef al-Zaharna clung to the hope of recovering the body of his fourth son, a martyr, to bury him alongside his siblings. He was relying on a project implemented by the Civil Defense in cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross to remove debris and retrieve the bodies of martyrs.
Civil Defense teams in Gaza began implementing the second phase of the project to recover the bodies of martyrs from under the rubble of homes destroyed in the Israeli war of annihilation.
This phase is scheduled to last 400 hours of work, in an attempt to reach the thousands of missing persons whose bodies remain buried under the rubble. This effort is taking place amidst a severe shortage of heavy equipment and resources necessary for search operations, while rescue teams are working manually in locations inaccessible to machinery.
He added that he felt a little relieved when he retrieved and buried his sons, but a deep sorrow remained in his heart, unable to retrieve his fourth son, who has the right to a grave. “This feeling is indescribable,” he said. Brigadier General Raed al-Dahshan, Director of Civil Defense in Gaza Governorate, stated that they have begun the second phase of the body recovery project and that they are undertaking “a very arduous and extensive task given the lack of equipment and the absence of any prospect for supplying heavy equipment to the Civil Defense.”
Therefore, “we had to coordinate with some international organizations, such as the Red Cross, to be able to provide heavy equipment and search under the rubble.”
He emphasized that they are working with a single mechanism and that their teams deployed on the ground lack heavy equipment and personal protective equipment, resulting in significant shortages and obstacles. He appealed to the world to provide them with the necessary equipment, as is done in other countries. He continued, “If some heavy equipment were available in other locations uand this work were divided among them, we would have finished it.”
