Gaza families bury bodies of loved ones trapped for years under rubble

Résumé détaillé

The remains of 69 Palestinians have been recovered in northern Gaza, allowing families to bury them.

Jabalia, Gaza Strip – Mahmoud Nabhan, a man in his sixties from Bir an-Naaja in northern Gaza, had waited more than three years for this day.

He wanted to give his loved ones a proper burial after 17 members of his family, including his seven children and grandchildren, were killed when their home was targeted 20 days after Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023. Among those killed was Nabhan’s 45-day-old grandchild.

After years of searching for their bodies, on Sunday Nabhan was finally able to bury his family members after Civil Defence teams retrieved their remains from the rubble of his home.

Nabhan said there had been no fighters, Israeli soldiers or captives inside the home when it was struck.

For the past three years, he had tried to help recover his family’s remains, but the difficult conditions prevented this.

Their recovery from his destroyed home brought some relief for Nabhan, but it also brought more trauma.

“It feels as if they have just been killed again. The wounds have reopened,” he said. “But, thank God, we now know that our children have a grave here, beside their siblings, and we can visit them.”

The genocide in Gaza killed at least 73,600 people, with 82 per cent of the structures in Gaza damaged and two-thirds of them destroyed by waves of Israeli air strikes and shelling.

Under the rubble were thousands of bodies, with the continued attacks by Israeli forces often making it too dangerous for families or Civil Defence teams to retrieve them.

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