Palestinians in northern Gaza held funeral ceremonies on Sunday for about 100 people, including 60 children, whose remains were recovered from destroyed buildings in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, Al Jazeera’s correspondent Ghazi al-Aloul reported.
Family members carried the remains from Zeitoun to al-Ma’madani cemetery in central Gaza City for burial. Civil defence crews and relatives had spent weeks digging through the ruins of homes hit during Israel’s war on Gaza, which began in October 2023. Many of the victims belonged to the extended Malaka family, which alone lost 55 members.
Al-Aloul said families had waited a long time for the chance to bury loved ones in “known, proper cemeteries,” noting that such an opportunity was “not available to every family” since Israeli forces had destroyed and dug up cemeteries elsewhere in Gaza during the war.
He said the remains, though wrapped in shrouds resembling intact bodies, were often only fragments — bone remnants and personal belongings, especially in the case of children. No complete bodies were recovered from the site.
Raed al-Dahshan, head of Gaza’s civil defence service, said his teams had plans to recover thousands more missing bodies but lacked heavy machinery and protective equipment.
He estimated that recovering the roughly 8,000 bodies still believed buried under rubble could take about 90 days with proper equipment, but warned the process could stretch on for years if equipment continues to be barred from entering Gaza.
