Gaza Herald – Gaza’s Civil Defense announced Sunday that it has resumed operations to recover the bodies of Palestinians still trapped beneath buildings destroyed during Israel’s genocide on the Strip, despite severe shortages of equipment and resources that continue to hinder rescue efforts.
The agency said the work is part of the second phase of a humanitarian recovery project aimed at retrieving victims from the rubble and returning them to their families for burial. It stressed that thousands of families are still waiting to learn the fate of missing relatives years after they disappeared beneath destroyed homes.
Civil Defense officials said crews have resumed operations with extremely limited resources, relying on one excavator, one loader, and one truck, provided through support from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is funding the project. The current phase covers 800 working hours across central Gaza, Gaza City, and northern Gaza, targeting 147 destroyed homes believed to contain the remains of 1,072 missing victims.
According to the agency, the first phase of the project recovered 333 bodies and human remains from 54 destroyed buildings during more than 500 working hours, while 226 bodies remain buried beneath the rubble, underscoring the scale of the destruction and the complexity of recovery operations.
Civil Defense highlighted one devastated residential block belonging to the Abu Sharia and Al-Hasayna families, where 308 Palestinians were killed, including 44 children and 37 women. It said many victims remain trapped beneath the debris, describing the site as one of the starkest examples of the humanitarian devastation caused by Israeli bombardment.
The agency appealed to the United Nations and international humanitarian organizations to expand support for recovery operations and called for pressure on Israel to allow the entry of heavy machinery and technical equipment needed to reach destroyed areas. It emphasized that recovering and burying the dead with dignity is an urgent humanitarian obligation that requires immediate international action.
