A large crowd gathered in Gaza City on Tuesday for the funeral of 112 people, most of them women and children, killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential complex in late 2023, near the start of the Gaza war.
The victims belonged to two large families, the Abu Sariya and the Hasaina, who together make up a single tribe. Their bodies were only recently pulled from the rubble, in a recovery operation that took two weeks.
Among the dead from the two families were 44 children, 38 women and seven people with disabilities.
Coffins were lined up in rows, each draped in the Palestinian flag, with some bearing a photograph of the person inside.
The BBC described the funeral as the largest of its kind held in Gaza.
The strike on Sabra
All 112 were killed when a residential complex in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City was hit by Israel on November 22, 2023. It was a day of heavy bombardment, six weeks after the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,200 people and led to the abduction of 251 hostages.
The BBC asked the Israel Defense Forces for information on what the target of the strike had been, but said it had not received a response.
Death toll across Gaza
At least 73,377 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war began, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
The recovery of the bodies was carried out by the Civil Defense, which operates under the Hamas-run Interior Ministry. The effort was supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Recovery still incomplete
Rescuers said more than 180 civilians had been inside the building when it was struck, and that about 90% of them were killed. They believe many bodies remain unrecovered, both inside the building and more widely across the Gaza Strip.
