In Gaza, Civil Defense unearths entire families

Shafaq News – Gaza

Civil Defense teams in Gaza continue to recover bodies from beneath the rubble more than two years after Israel’s war began, an official told Shafaq News on Sunday.

Central Province Civil Defense Director Rami Al-Aidi said the first phase of a new recovery project has started in Maghazi camp, coordinated with the International Committee of the Red Cross, and supported by the rental of a single excavator for roughly 400 hours of work across the Strip.

Rescue crews are now relying on outdated, deteriorated machinery, he noted, with only one functional heavy vehicle available in all of Gaza. Civil Defense has appealed to international agencies to allow the entry of bulldozers, excavators, and trucks needed to extract victims and bury them “properly.”

Al-Aidi estimated that around 280 people remain under the rubble in the Central Province alone, while overall figures suggest about 10,000 missing across Gaza.

Forensic spokesperson Mohammed Ashour said his teams are working alongside the Civil Defense to document and identify remains, many of which are severely decomposed or fragmented due to bombardment. Limited DNA-testing capacity, he added, is slowing identification.

Despite minimal resources, recovery teams press on amid hundreds of cases where entire households were wiped out, leaving a single survivor. One example is Mahdi al-Nawasra, who said his five-story home was struck on December 24, 2023, killing all his 48 relatives.

Fuel shortages and destroyed equipment prevented recovery at the time, leaving the remains trapped for two years.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s war has killed 69,756 and injured 170,946 others, according to the Gaza-run Health Ministry. In the past 24 hours alone, 21 deaths and 83 injuries were recorded, despite the United States-backed ceasefire in place.

Read more: Gaza’s children face a new killer beneath the rubble