Thousands of Palestinians buried under rubble in Gaza due to Israeli bombings may never be identified

In the absence of specialised tools, civil defence authorities in the Strip have been left facing the onerous task of extracting over 10,000 bodies believed to be buried under the rubble.

Israel has not only slaughtered tens of thousands of Palestinians during its ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, but it has also prevented the survivors from extricating the remains of their loved ones from the mountain of rubble its relentless bombing raids have created throughout the besieged enclave. There is a growing risk that thousands of bodies may never be identified even if they are retrieved.

“There is no doubt that these bodies could soon become difficult to identify,” Pat Griffiths, the spokesperson of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told The Guardian. “The longer it takes for human remains to be recovered, the more difficult it can be to identify them. The longer the deceased lie beneath the rubble, the more likely they will be in advanced stages of decomposition — even skeletonised — when eventually recovered.”

He added: “Forensic experts lose access to circumstantial evidence that can be used to corroborate their identity.”

Israel’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip’s pre-genocide population of 2.3 million has created over 61 million tonnes of rubble. Even after the so-called ceasefire of last October, the Israelis have prevented excavators and other heavy machinery from entering the besieged enclave to aid in the retrieval of the trapped bodies.

In the absence of specialised tools, civil defence authorities in the Strip have been left facing the onerous task of extracting over 10,000 bodies believed to be buried under the rubble. Civil defence personnel have been forced to work with rudimentary tools and their bare hands to remove the equivalent of multiple apartment blocks’ worth of rubble to recover each body.

Furthermore, the Israelis have continued to bomb with total impunity since the Trump-fronted “ceasefire,” flattening entire apartment blocks. They have killed nearly 1,000 Palestinians since the supposed truce, creating yet more rubble.

“The longer it takes to retrieve a body, the harder it becomes to identify — including by using DNA,” The Guardian report added.

Gaza’s civil defence personnel have an impossible task on their hands.

“Time, ultimately, is the greatest enemy of identification,” Dr. Cristina Cattaneo, a professor of forensic pathology at the University of Milan, told the British paper. “When it comes to identification, the more time passes, the slimmer the chances of success. In the early stages, if a body is relatively well preserved, the face and other distinguishing features may still be recognisable. As time passes, many of the features that allow for a reliable identification are lost.”

Dr. Ahmed Dahir, Gaza’s forensic medicine director, said: “In some cases, we were surprised to find that a person reported missing for only two weeks had turned into bones bearing signs of animal scavenging, with nothing left but bones. Under normal conditions, reaching this stage due to environmental factors and weathering usually takes between six months and one year.”

The Israelis have been using banned munitions that have turned bodies into unrecognisable husks within seconds of the blast. These barbaric weapons have contributed to the endless suffering of the surviving Palestinians with slaughtered family members and friends.

In the absence of DNA testing kits, which remain banned by the Israelis, the Palestinians have also been grappling with the tragedy of not being able to identify the bodies retrieved from the rubble.

A cemetery was established in Deir al-Balah to bury and preserve unidentified bodies recovered from the rubble and other temporary burial sites, with each grave numbered and documented in the hope that the remains could one day be identified and returned to their families.

“The number of bodies buried in this cemetery has now exceeded 650,” said Ziad Obeid, the director of the cemeteries department in Gaza. “Today, we are approaching three years since the beginning of the war, and some bodies have now been buried for more than two years.”

Further worsening the situation, the few remaining hospitals in the territory lack the equipment for DNA testing, which is desperately needed to help identify the deceased. Israel does not allow DNA testing materials to enter Gaza.

But genetic material, too, can deteriorate over time. “The passage of time also affects DNA, increasing the risk of degradation and making identification progressively more difficult,” Cattaneo said. “A genetic match that might have been rapid and highly reliable a few weeks earlier can become far more complex months later.”

Identifying the bodies is not just a question of restoring dignity to the dead; it is also necessary for the health of the living. Psychologists describe the unresolved grief of relatives of the unidentified dead as an “ambiguous loss” that can generate or contribute to depression, trauma and identity confusion, a situational disorder widespread in Gaza.

Hundreds of Palestinians who entered Israel on the morning of October 7 to check what was happening never returned to Gaza, and there has been no information about their whereabouts. This has led to painful uncertainty for their families, who continue to search for answers about their fate.

“We have had no information about him since that day,’’ Saed al-Yazji, 52, whose brother Sameh disappeared on the morning of October 7, told The Guardian. “We still cling to the hope that he is alive because there has been no confirmation that he was killed or detained.”

He added: “His disappearance has devastated the family. His wife suffers repeated psychological breakdowns, and after two years of not knowing whether he is alive or dead, they can no longer sleep or eat normally. We wait every day for news that might finally bring peace to our hearts.”

The pain of not knowing the fate of their loved ones has had devastating consequences for the survivors. Late last year, when the Israelis were sending unidentified and unrecognisable bodies of Palestinians they had killed in their rape and torture dungeons, families with missing relatives were enduring excruciating visits to hospitals and morgues in the hope of finding their loved ones and giving them dignified burials.

Their searches mostly ended in painful disappointment, as most bodies were impossible to identify and had to be buried in mass graves.

The Guardian reported the story of Wael Radwan, 24, from Jabaliya, who lost his father, 49, and brother, 26, after their home was hit by Israeli artillery fire in December 2024. More than 18 months later, he has been unable to find their bodies.

“I was later told they had been buried at Kamal Adwan Hospital, but when I returned after the siege, the site had been bulldozed and I could not find their bodies,” Wael said. “Without death certificates, my brother’s children are denied assistance for orphans because there is no official proof of their father’s death.”

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