GAZA, (Palestine Foundation Information Center), Gaza’s Civil Defense announced on Tuesday that its crews had recovered the bodies and human remains of 47 Palestinians from beneath the rubble of the Al-Hassaina family home in the Sabra neighborhood, south of Gaza City.
Mohammed Abu Dan, executive supervisor of body recovery operations at the Civil Defense, said rescue teams recovered the remains of 47 victims from a single house belonging to the Al-Hassaina family.
Abu Dan said search teams are still looking for the remains of 36 other victims believed to be trapped beneath the collapsed building.
He explained that recovery efforts are facing major operational challenges and said crews will continue searching on Wednesday beneath neighboring homes, where some remains may have been displaced by the force of the Israeli bombardment that struck the area.
The recovery operation is part of the second phase of the Civil Defense’s body retrieval program, launched on Sunday, which aims to recover the remains of approximately 8,500 Palestinians still buried beneath the rubble of destroyed homes across the Gaza Strip.
The bodies being recovered are from the Sabra neighborhood massacre on November 23, 2023, when Israeli airstrikes targeted a residential block containing homes belonging to the Al-Hassaina and Abu Sharia families. The attack killed more than 93 Palestinians, including over 55 members of the Al-Hassaina family, most of them women and children.
The victims’ bodies remained buried beneath tons of rubble for more than two and a half years because widespread destruction and restrictions on the entry of heavy equipment prevented rescue and debris removal operations.
Civil Defense teams continue to face significant obstacles during recovery efforts, most notably a severe shortage of equipment and heavy machinery. Only one excavator is currently operating in Gaza Governorate. Search operations have also been complicated by the displacement of human remains beneath neighboring buildings due to the force of the explosions, in addition to the natural decomposition of bodies over time.
The Civil Defense has also reported that a large number of its vehicles are out of service because of damage and a lack of resources, slowing search and recovery operations and prolonging the suffering of thousands of families still waiting to recover and bury the remains of their loved ones.
