Bodies of members of the Hassayna and Abu Sharia families, killed in an Israeli strike in 2023 and recently recovered from the rubble, are draped in Palestinian flags during their funeral in Gaza City. AP
The victims were among more than 300 Palestinians killed on 22 November 2023 when Israeli warplanes flattened a residential block in the Sabra neighbourhood during Israel's ongoing genocidal war on Gaza.
Civil Defence crews recovered the bodies over the weekend after spending 136 hours digging through the rubble by hand in southern Gaza City, the rescue agency said. The operation, carried out over about two weeks, uncovered the remains beneath collapsed homes in Sabra.
The recovered bodies included 40 children, 38 women, and seven people with disabilities, according to the Civil Defence, which said another 157 people are still believed to be buried beneath the rubble.
"The search for the missing and the recovery of bodies is a critical humanitarian issue," Amani al-Naouq, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza, told AFP. She said the operations require time, specialised equipment and coordination among multiple parties.
Colonel Mohammed Abu Dan, who oversees the Civil Defence's body recovery project, said rescue teams faced extremely difficult conditions, manually searching through collapsed concrete slabs and twisted metal.
Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral as the bodies, wrapped in Palestinian flags, were laid in rows near the destroyed neighbourhood before being carried on stretchers through narrow streets for burial in a nearby cemetery.
Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, launched in October 2023, has killed at least 73,375 Palestinians and wounded 174,162 others, most of them women and children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Experts also estimate that more than 10,000 Palestinians remain buried beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings, with many still unaccounted for years after the attacks.
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