It has been described as one of the most gruelling recovery efforts in modern warfare.<\/p>\n
As negotiations over the fragile Gaza<\/a> ceasefire continue, Palestinians have started to dig through 61m tonnes of debris, 20 times more than the combined mass of all debris generated by conflicts since 2008. Underneath, at least 10,000 people are thought to be buried.<\/p>\n The Guardian spoke with several families in Gaza desperately searching for the bodies of their missing relatives, as well as members of the Palestinian civil defence, a branch of the security services responsible for emergency services and rescue operations. Photos, video footage and data shed light on the scale of the task ahead.<\/p>\n Map showing the estimated quantity of debris in Gaza<\/a><\/p>\n Rescue teams have so far had to rely on rudimentary tools \u2013 shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows, rakes, hoes \u2013 and their bare hands. Requests to Israel to allow the entry of excavators and heavy machinery so they can work more effectively have received no response.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole world has seen the equipment that was brought in to retrieve the bodies of Israeli hostages [including bulldozers and excavators],\u201d said Dr Mohammed al-Mughir, the director of humanitarian support and international cooperation at the civil defence. \u201cWe also need the same equipment to retrieve our bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n Members of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and Egyptian workers use a bulldozer to search for the bodies of Israeli hostages in a tunnel discovered in Khan Younis. Photograph: Jehad Alshrafi\/AP<\/p>\n Gaza\u2019s ministry of health and civil defence estimates about 10,000 people are still buried in the rubble. Some experts believe the number could be as high as 14,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to the health ministry, 472 bodies were recovered during the first 16 days of the ceasefire and taken to hospital morgues for identification. This number does not include the 195 bodies returned by Israel as part of the ceasefire agreement.<\/p>\n Chart showing the number of casualties arriving at Gaza\u2019s hospital morgues. On the first day of the ceasefire, 116 recovered bodies arrived.<\/a><\/p>\n Even if Israel were to allow excavators and bulldozers into Gaza today, civil defence officials estimate it would take up to nine months to recover the majority of the bodies.<\/p>\n The agency says recovery efforts so far have been limited to small houses and apartment blocks of one or two floors, where rescuers are able to reach bodies using the few tools at their disposal.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem comes when you\u2019re dealing with buildings [that were] seven or eight storeys high \u2013 that\u2019s when we need the heavy equipment, we\u2019re still waiting to be allowed to bring in,\u201d said Mughir.<\/p>\n In the meantime, hundreds of families queue every day at hospitals and offices of the health ministry and civil defence, seeking information about missing relatives. Mughir said that at the civil defence headquarters in Gaza City alone, upwards of 30 families a day ask for help trying to locate and recover their loved ones.<\/p>\n Still buried a year on<\/p>\n On 29 October 2024, the five-storey house in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, where Aya Abu Nasr\u2019s extended family lived collapsed after an Israeli airstrike.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of my family members had been staying on the ground and first floors,\u201d said Nasr, 26. \u201cI lost five of my siblings \u2013 two brothers and three sisters \u2013 along with all their families. More than 100 members of my extended family died in that strike, and about 50 of them are still under the rubble to this day, a full year later.\u201d<\/p>\n Aya Abu Nasr, whose home in Beit Lahiya was hit by an Israeli airstrike in October 2024. Photograph: Amjed Tantesh\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Nasr said she has tried repeatedly to recover the bodies, but their remains are scattered between the ground and first floors. Retrieving them without excavators, she explained, was impossible.<\/p>\n Since the start of the war, hundreds of missing person reports have been filed with the civil defence authorities. Officials say they already have estimates of how many bodies are believed to lie beneath specific buildings and houses.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Rafah, there are more than 35 houses containing about 170 dead bodies,\u201d said Mughir. \u201cIn Khan Younis and the eastern regions of the strip, there are many buildings under which hundreds of other bodies remain unrecovered.\u201d<\/p>\n Because of repeated displacements and evacuation orders across the Gaza Strip, thousands of families have been separated from their loved ones. Many know their relatives were killed, based on accounts from friends or neighbours, but have no idea where their bodies lie.<\/p>\n The last time Hadeel Shahiber, from western Gaza, saw her parents and siblings was on 8 November 2023, when the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of Gaza City, including the area around al-Shifa hospital, as part of its expanding ground operation against Hamas. Shahiber, now 34, decided to remain in the port area, while her relatives fled to the neighbourhood of al-Sabra. Nine days later they were all killed in an Israeli airstrike.<\/p>\n Hadeel Shahiber lost her entire family almost two years ago. Photograph: Amjed Tantesh\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cWeeks later, when I finally managed to reach al-Sabra, a man stopped us, holding a list of names of those who had been identified among the dead,\u201d Shahiber said. \u201cThe first names on it were my father, Nabil, my mother, my siblings. During the first ceasefire in January, more than a year after their deaths, we were finally able to recover and properly bury some of them, including my parents. But some bodies are still trapped under the rubble.<\/p>\n \u201cKnowing that some of my loved ones remain under the rubble, denied a proper burial that would honour their dignity, fills me with pain and sorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n The need to identify victims<\/p>\n Identifying the bodies is not just a question of restoring dignity to the dead; it is also necessary for the health of the living. Psychologists described the unresolved grief of relatives of the unidentified dead as an \u201cambiguous loss\u201d which can generate or contribute to depression, trauma and identity confusion, a situational disorder widespread in Gaza.<\/p>\n The few remaining hospitals in the territory lack the equipment for DNA testing, which is desperately needed to help identify thousands of missing or deceased peope. Israel does not allow DNA testing materials to enter Gaza.<\/p>\n For that reason, as well as the advanced state of decomposition of many of the bodies, forensic doctors often struggle to identify victims.<\/p>\n As part of the US-brokered ceasefire, Israel \u2013 in exchange for the remains of 15 hostages returned by Hamas \u2013 handed over 195 bodies of Palestinians to Gaza. Several of them were blindfolded, bound at the hands and feet, or bore gunshot wounds.<\/p>\n Dozens of bodies have since been identified, but at least 54 unidentified Palestinians returned from Israel were buried this month.<\/p>\n Bodies of unidentified Palestinians returned from Israel are buried in a mass grave in Deir al-Balah. Photograph: Jehad Alshrafi\/AP<\/p>\n The Polish poet and recipient of the 1996 Nobel prize in Literature, Wis\u0142awa Szymborska, wrote that \u201cafter every war, someone has to clean up. Someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road, so the corpse-filled wagons can pass.\u201d<\/p>\n Jaco Cilliers, the special representative of the United Nations developing programme of assistance to the Palestinian people, outlined the scale of that operation in Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cThe initial part is really to clear the roads and to make the hospitals, schools and other social buildings accessible, so that\u2019s where the major rubble is being removed,\u201d Cilliers said. \u201cIf you built a 12-metre wall around Central Park and filled it with rubble, that\u2019s the amount that needs to be removed.\u201d<\/p>\n The UN environment programme has calculated<\/a> that it would take seven years for 105 trucks to remove all the debris. Vehicles would need to navigate a shattered landscape where 77% of the road network has been damaged. Many routes have been destroyed altogether, obstructed or otherwise rendered impassable.<\/p>\n Map showing how 77% of the Gaza Strip\u2019s road network has been blocked, damaged or destroyed<\/a><\/p>\n The work is made even more difficult and perilous by the presence of hazardous debris, such as unexploded ordnance and asbestos, the United Nations\u2019 Gaza debris management working group has said.<\/p>\n