An aerial view shows the Al-Maqussi Towers district in northwestern Gaza City during a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian factions after two years of war. AFP
Under the ceasefire deal, Israel was to turn over the bodies of 15 Palestinians for every deceased Israeli returned.
The Palestinian resistance group has so far returned 20 living and the bodies of nine of the 28 deceased captives.
Hamas insisted on "its commitment to the agreement and its implementation, including its keenness to hand over all remaining Israeli corpses".
However, the group warned the process “may require some time," as some of these corpses were buried in tunnels destroyed by the occupation, while others remain under the rubble of buildings it bombed and demolished," Hamas said in a statement.
The Palestinian group added that the retrieval of the remaining bodies requires equipment to remove rubble, which is currently unavailable due to Israel’s ban on the entry of such tools.
The mayor of Khan Younis in southern Gaza said that the machinery available to the municipalities is old and incapable of clearing rubble or reopening roads, adding that the municipalities’ rubble removal capacity has been completely depleted after two years of war and systematic destruction.
He said that at least 500 new bulldozers are needed to remove the vast amounts of debris across the city, Quds news network reported.
Turkey has already deployed dozens of disaster relief specialists to help search for the bodies. They are currently stationed at the Egyptian border, awaiting a green light from the Israeli government to enter Gaza, a Turkish official told AFP on Friday.
"A team of 81 AFAD members is currently waiting at the border on the Egyptian side," the official said, referring to the government agency for search and rescue operations. "It remains unclear when Israel will allow the Turkish team to enter Gaza."
Gaza’s civil defence agency estimates that the bodies of about 10,000 Palestinians are trapped under the debris and collapsed buildings. The task ahead of the rescuers is immense, given an estimated 60 million tonnes of rubble across the territory.
For many in Gaza, while there was relief that Israel’s bombing had stopped, the road to recovery felt impossible, given the sheer scale of the devastation. Israel's bombing has destroyed or damaged around 90 percent of the strip's infrastructure.
"There's no water -- no clean water, not even salty water, no water at all. No essentials of life exist -- no food, no drink, nothing," said Mustafa Mahram, who returned to Gaza City after the ceasefire. "As you can see, all that's left is rubble."
The United Nations said on Friday it would take time to reverse a famine in the Strip and urged the opening of all crossing points into the war-shattered Palestinian territory.
“It’s going to take some time to scale back the famine,” the UN World Food Programme’s (WFP) spokesperson Abeer Etefa told a media briefing in Geneva, saying the WFP had five distribution points up and running but wanted to get to 145 in order to “flood Gaza with food”.
The UN humanitarian organisation added that it had not started any aid distribution in Gaza City as only “limited nutritional supplies” have made it in due to key northern crossings being closed. Earlier, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that infectious diseases are “spiralling out of control”, with only 13 of the territory’s 36 hospitals even partially functioning.
“Whether meningitis … diarrhoea, respiratory illnesses, we’re talking about a mammoth amount of work,” Hanan Balkhy, regional director for the UN health body, told AFP in Cairo.
Israel has killed at least 67,967 Palestinians in Gaza – mostly women and children – and injured more than 170,000 others, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Independent estimates suggest the true death toll is likely to be significantly higher.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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