‘My daughter’s bones are scattered on the ground’

Everything gets mixed up. Children’s backpacks in different colors. sneakers. A steel pot perforated by splinters. bed, chair, cooker, lampshade; Broken windows, mirrors, drinking glasses. A piece of clothing.

Lastly, items that are shredded and covered in dust can become markers. Often they belong to the dead lying near the surface of the wreckage.

“Since the Israeli occupation forces withdrew from Rafah, we have received about 150 calls from civilians saying their relatives’ bodies were under their homes,” said Haitham al-Homs, head of the emergency and ambulance service at the Rafah Civil Defense Department. . It is located in the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian health authorities estimate that the number of missing people is as high as 10,000. If there are no obvious signs, such as clothing, on the surface, search teams rely on information from relatives and neighbors or follow the scent of death wafting from the ruins.

WARNING: This story contains distressing content.

The Israeli government has banned the BBC and other international media outlets from entering Gaza and reporting independently. We rely on trusted local journalists to document the experiences of people like those searching for missing people.

Every evening Mr Homs updates the list of discoveries. His team carefully excavates the wreckage, knowing they are looking for shattered fragments of humanity. Often what is recovered is little more than a pile of bones. Israeli high explosive bombs exploded, blowing into pieces killing many. The bones and pieces of clothing were placed in a white body bag with Mr Holmes writing “majhoul” in Arabic. It means “unconfirmed.”

Rafah resident Osama Saleh returned home after the ceasefire and found a skeleton inside his home. The skull was fractured. Mr Saleh estimates the body had been lying there for four to five months. “We are human beings with emotions…I can’t convey to you how devastating the tragedy is,” he says. Being surrounded by the smell of decaying corpses day after day is a deeply unsettling experience, as those who have witnessed the aftermath of mass death often testify.

“The bodies are horrific. We are witnessing horror,” said Osama Saleh. “I cried because it felt so painful.”

Family members are also arriving at the hospital to retrieve the body. Recovered bones and clothing are spread out in body bags in the yard of the European Hospital in southern Gaza.

Abdul Salam Al Mugayer, 19, from Rafah, went missing in the Shabura region. According to his uncle Zaki, if you went there during the war it was a place you never returned to. “So we didn’t go looking for him for that reason. We wouldn’t have come back.”

Zaki believes that the bones and set of clothes in front of him belong to the missing Abdul Salam. He stands with hospital worker Jihad Abu Khreis, waiting for Abdul Salam’s brother to arrive.

“We are 99% sure that the body is his, but now we need final confirmation from his closest brother to confirm that the trousers and shoes are his,” Mr Abu Khreis said.

The brothers had just arrived from the refugee camp of al-Mawasi, also in southern Gaza. He had a picture of Abdul Salam on his phone. There was a picture of his sneakers.

He knelt in front of the body bag and pulled back the cover. He touched the skull and the clothes. He looked at the shoes. There were tears in his eyes. ID verification has been completed.

Another family moved along the line of body bags. There was a grandmother, her son, her adult sister, and a young child. The child was stuck at the back of the group, while the grandmother and son looked under the cover of the body bag. They stared for a few seconds and then hugged each other in sadness.

The family then enlisted the help of hospital staff to move the remains. They cried, but no one cried loudly.

Aya al-Dabeh was 13 years old and living with her family and hundreds of other refugees at a school in Tal al-Hawa, northern Gaza City. She was one of nine children. One day at the beginning of the war, Aya went to the upstairs bathroom of her school and was shot in the chest by an Israeli sniper, according to her family. The Israel Defense Forces says it does not target civilians and blames Hamas for attacks in civilian areas. During the war, the UN Human Rights Office stated that “there was intensive shooting by Israeli forces in populated areas, resulting in apparently unlawful killings, including of unarmed bystanders.”

The family buried Aya next to the school, where her mother, Lina Aldaba, 43, wrapped her in blankets “to protect her from the rain and sun” in case the grave was disturbed and exposed to the elements. .

When Israeli troops took over the school, Lina fled south. She went with her four other children – two daughters and two sons – to reunite with her husband, who had earlier left with the couple’s other children. Lina had no choice but to leave her daughter where she lay, hoping to return and recover her remains for a proper burial when peace comes.

“Aya was a very kind girl and everyone loved her. She loved everyone, her teachers and her studies, and she did very well in school. She wanted everyone to do well,” says Lina. Once the ceasefire was reached, Lina asked her relatives still living in the north to check Aya’s grave. The news was devastating.

“They informed us that her head was in a different place, her legs were in a different place, her ribs were in a different place. The person who visited her was shocked and sent us pictures,” she says.

“When I saw that child, I couldn’t understand how my daughter had been pulled out of the grave, how the dogs had eaten her. I couldn’t control my nerves.”

Relatives collected the remains, and soon Lina and her family would travel north to transport Aya’s remains to a proper grave. Lina has endless sadness and unanswered questions. This is the same question faced by many parents who have lost children in Gaza. Whatever the circumstances of the war, what could they have done differently? “I couldn’t take her from where she was buried,” Lina says. She then asks, “Where could I have taken her?”

With additional reporting by Malak Hassouneh, Alice Doyard and Adam Campbell.