Arabic version: فرق غزة تنتشل رفات 55 فلسطينياً
According to Al Jazeera, Gaza civil defence teams recovered the remains of 55 Palestinians from the rubble of a residential building in Gaza City that was destroyed in an Israeli air strike nearly three years ago. The operation concluded on Saturday.
The remains were found beneath the Malka family home in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported. Colonel Muhammad Abu Dan, who supervises the rescue teams, said they had searched for more than 60 bodies from the Malka family during the previous 72 hours. Wafa said Israeli forces struck the building on November 19, 2023, while family members were sheltering inside after displacement from their homes.
The recovery is part of a slow, largely manual effort to retrieve people buried beneath Gaza’s ruins. Civil defence teams face a chronic shortage of heavy machinery needed to remove broken concrete. Gaza’s Health Ministry, UN agencies and aid organisations estimate that 10,000 to 14,000 people remain missing under rubble across the territory. The United Nations Satellite Centre says 82 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged during the war.
Abu Dan called for international humanitarian organisations to provide equipment to help teams recover more people, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. A joint funeral procession is expected next weekend. Gaza’s Health Ministry said hospitals received 17 bodies and 27 injured people over the past 48 hours, while additional victims remained under debris or in streets that ambulance and civil defence teams could not reach.
The ministry said that since the ceasefire took hold last October, at least 1,344 people have been killed, 4,464 injured and at least 815 bodies recovered from rubble. It put the overall death toll since October 2023 at 73,470, with at least 174,540 people injured.
