Gaza City buried 112 Palestinians on Tuesday whose bodies had lain buried under rubble for nearly three years before being recovered. The coffins were laid out in an open space among destroyed buildings before the funerals, a scene reflecting the scale of destruction left by the war.
The victims were killed in Israeli bombings in November 2023, but their bodies could not be recovered until now because they remained trapped beneath the debris. Hundreds of people attended the mass funerals, among the largest ever held in the Gaza Strip.
Ahmed Abu Saria, a relative of some of the victims, told the AFP news agency the funerals would let families end their mourning. He said it was a funeral for the Palestinian people, adding that many people remained under the rubble and that those being buried had neither fought nor carried weapons.
Thousands still missing
Of the 112 bodies recovered in July, 44 belonged to children, all members of the same extended family, according to Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for civil protection in Gaza. Bassal estimated that more than 8,000 bodies remain buried under rubble across the territory.
Mohammed al-Mughayyir, operations director of an emergency relief organization tied to Hamas's governing apparatus, said crews worked nonstop for 17 days, aided by two pieces of heavy machinery provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. He described finding intact skeletons in some cases, with bones held together only by clothing.
Civil protection officials and groups including the Red Cross have long said Israel, which controls all entry points to the territory, does not allow in enough machinery and materials to recover the dead.
Deaths continue despite ceasefire
Despite a ceasefire in effect since October 2025, airstrikes and artillery fire continue to hit Gaza almost daily. At least 1,252 Palestinians have been killed since October 10, 2025, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.
At Tuesday's funerals, men lined up for memorial prayers, and photographs of identified victims were placed on their coffins. A member of the Husseina family, which was wiped out, said he had lost hope of finding victims still missing, describing some as vaporized or crushed under blocks of concrete, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
A report published in April by the World Bank, the European Union and the United Nations estimated 68 million tons of rubble across Gaza, and found more than 60% of the territory's over 2 million residents had lost their homes since the war began.
