‘My heart is broken’: Palestinians begin searching the Gaza rubble for their dead | Gaza

gFor two days, Hali Qadir begged his parents to escape with him to southern Gaza, warning them that it was too dangerous to stay there. His father, who was known for being stubborn, rejected this offer. Their arguments never ended; An Israeli airstrike hit his father’s house, burying his parents under the rubble.

On Sunday, two days after the ceasefire was declared, Kadir returned to search the ruins of his family’s house. He spent the day examining the shattered concrete and twisted metal for any trace of them. All he could find were pieces of their skulls and parts of their hands.

“My father, a retired ambulance driver, was known for his strong will and patience. He did not know fear and was always optimistic,” said Khadr, 40, from Jabaliya in northern Gaza.

Khadr took his parents’ remains to the cemetery, only to find that they too had been destroyed. He decided to bury them next to the few graves that still remained intact.

Like Kadeer, thousands of Palestinians have returned to northern Gaza since Friday’s ceasefire with a daunting task ahead of them: searching for loved ones killed in Israeli airstrikes weeks or months ago, whose bodies remain buried under rubble.

Gaza’s civil defense agency estimates that the bodies of approximately 10,000 people are buried under rubble and collapsed buildings. The cessation of fighting gave the ambulance service the chance to finally begin searching for the dead and their families to end the search.

Given the estimated 60 million tons of debris in the area, the task ahead of rescuers is enormous.

Many of the roads are destroyed or blocked by debris. Civil defense workers are short of heavy equipment and are forced to use pickaxes and sledgehammers to break collapsed buildings. Rescue teams need to move slowly. The debris is also full of unexploded bombs and ammunition.

“At first, we focus on collecting the bodies lying on the streets to protect those left behind, especially due to the presence of stray dogs attacking the bodies,” said Khaled al-Ayoubi, 64, chief of civil defense in Northern Gaza.

Other rescuers are forced to dig through the rubble with their bare hands. So far they have only rescued a small fraction of the 10,000 missing people and have not yet begun searching the ruins of multi-storey buildings.

Gaza civil defense agency humanitarian support and international cooperation director, 38-year-old Dr. Mohammed al-Mugheer said all bodies should be recovered within six months to a year if Israel allows the entry of heavy equipment in the coming days.

Most residents of northern Gaza cannot bear to wait that long. They began returning to their ruined homes to search alone for their loved ones.

Yahya al-Muqra, 32, from Jabaliya, believes his brother Sharif is dead. He lost contact with her after an Israeli airstrike on their home on July 25. He managed to visit the razed building but found no trace of Sharif’s body.

“We went to check the area but could not find any trace of him, it was as if he had disappeared, the house and everything around it was reduced to rubble,” said Muqra. “Witnesses said they last saw him near the house.” His brother has epilepsy, and even if the airstrike didn’t kill him, he worries he would die without his medication.

On Sunday, Muqra finally had the opportunity to search for her brother, but as she worked alone, she found no trace of him.

“I was hoping to find something, a piece of clothing, any trace that would prove the Sheriff was there. We need really heavy machinery to search under the wreckage, but those machinery are not available,” he said.

For many families, the pain of not knowing where, when and how their loved ones died is immense. For months they remained exiled from their homes, waiting in limbo for the opportunity to find even a piece of what they had lost to say goodbye to.

Providing families with this chance is what drives rescue workers in Gaza, who work meticulously under the intense sun as anxious families wait nearby.

“Families feel that retrieving the bodies of their martyrs is a way to honor them and preserve their souls, and it reassures them that their loved ones were indeed martyred and are no longer alive,” said Fadi al-Salibi, 35, a civil defense worker.

Muqra hopes that the coming days will reveal something about her brother’s fate. He plans to bury Şerif in the garden of his house when the cemeteries in his neighborhood are demolished.

“I’m heartbroken because my brother hasn’t been buried yet. Even a single bone would allow us to rest him and get some relief,” he said.