RAMALLAH(Palestine Foundation Information Center) Palestinian rights groups reported on Tuesday that the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) continue to withhold 552 bodies, including 256 in the so-called cemeteries of numbers, along with hundreds of martyrs from the Gaza Strip.
This came in a statement released on the National Day for the Retrieval of Bodies, which is observed annually on August 27, by the Palestine Prisoners Society (PPS), the Commission of Detainees’ and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs, al-Damir Foundation for Human Rights, and the National Campaign to Retrieve the Bodies of Martyrs.
The institutions highlighted that “the number of bodies being held by Israel has reached 552 people in the cemeteries of numbers and refrigerators.
They also noted that the detained bodies included nine women, 32 prisoners, 55 children under the age of 18, five individuals from 1948 occupied Palestine, and six Palestinian refugees from Lebanon.
The cemetery of numbers is a set of secret burial sites surrounded by stones and lacking proper markers. Each grave has a metal plate with a specific number instead of names for the martyrs, with each number referring to the security file of an individual. Human rights organizations confirm that many of these graves date back to the establishment of Israel.
