Palestinians in Gaza City held a funeral procession for the remains of 50 martyrs whose bodies were recovered by Civil Defense from under the rubble of destroyed homes. The bodies had remained buried for nearly three years after their homes were targeted in the early months of the war.
The recovery operation is taking place amidst a severe shortage of heavy equipment and the difficulty of accessing areas controlled by the Israeli occupation forces. Meanwhile, Palestinian families continue to wait for the recovery of their loved ones’ remains buried under the rubble of their destroyed homes.
Al Jazeera correspondent Ghazi Al-Aloul reported that the Civil Defense received funding weeks ago from the International Committee of the Red Cross to implement a project to recover the martyrs’ bodies from under the rubble. The project involves 800 hours of work distributed across the Gaza Strip. He explained that the teams operate in areas where Palestinians reside and do not include areas under Israeli occupation.
He added that Civil Defense teams in Gaza City have been working for the past several weeks to recover the remains of 50 bodies, which were collected in the courtyard of Al-Shifa Medical Complex. The remains were recovered from the neighborhoods of Tel al-Hawa, Zeitoun, Sabra, Sheikh Radwan, and Al-Shati, as well as other areas within the city. The bodies belong to several families, including the Sawafiri, Batniji, and Gharbiya families, whose members were killed during the early months of the war in 2023. After nearly three years under the rubble of their homes, Civil Defense teams, using only one excavator, managed to reach the bodies and recover as many as possible.
Al-Aloul noted that in most cases, what was recovered were not complete bodies, but rather remains, bones, and personal belongings, due to decomposition caused by the years and the conditions under which the bodies were buried.
He said that the families of the martyrs waited all this time, hoping to find the remains of their loved ones and bury them, while thousands of bodies still remain buried under the rubble of destroyed homes.
