Mass funeral held for 112 people whose bodies were recovered from single Gaza residential block bombed by Israel

Thousands of Palestinians gathered in Gaza City on Tuesday to bury 112 people, including 40 children, from the Abu Sharia and Hassaineh families.

Their bodies were recovered over the past weeks from beneath the ruins of their homes in the Sabra neighborhood in southern Gaza City, which Israel bombed without warning during the second month of its 2023 war on the enclave, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense Directorate.

In one of the largest mass funerals held in Gaza, the bodies and remains, draped in Palestinian flags, were placed near the families’ destroyed homes. After funeral prayers, they were buried in the Zeitoun neighborhood’s Baptist cemetery in southeastern Gaza City.

The strike on the residential block in November 2023 is believed to have killed around 153 people.

Work to recover the 112 bodies began in July, but shortages of equipment and personnel made the process arduous, Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Mada Masr. The bodies of the remaining 41 people were not recovered.

The victims are among nearly 14,000 people missing since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and believed to be trapped under the rubble, he said.

The operation began in mid-July and relied on a single excavation vehicle, which the agency obtained with support from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The vehicle is the only one of its kind available to the civil defense, as Israeli forces have destroyed all 12 bulldozers supplied by Egypt after the October ceasefire to help clear the rubble, according to Basal.

The lack of equipment forces civil defense crews to search for human remains with their bare hands, greatly increasing the strain of their work, he said, adding that the last recovery operation they were able to complete using heavy machinery was in November 2023, before their equipment was destroyed.

“This means it will take us many years to recover all the victims,” he said, calling for more equipment, resources and personnel to help resolve what he described as a “purely humanitarian issue.”

Many families in Gaza have been forced to search for the remains of their loved ones themselves, hiring laborers and using hammers to break apart concrete blocks in the hopes of finding them beneath the rubble, according to Basal.

Beyond the shortage of equipment, families also face difficulties identifying the recovered remains, left decomposing for months or years, especially in the absence of DNA testing labs, the spokesperson said

Thousands of families in Gaza have been denied even the certainty of confirming their loved ones’ deaths , whether because their bodies remain buried under tons of rubble, cemeteries have been bulldozed and destroyed, or because some bodies have disintegrated under the impact of heavy missiles.

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