The families situated in Deir Al-Balah retrieved thousands of buried bodies with bare hands in Gaza' graveyard' streets.
The debris has continued to block the bodies, and the smell has been sickening in Gaza.
Families Retrieve Thousands of Buried Bodies
Hundreds of people scrape through tons of wreckage daily with shovels, iron bars, and bare hands. The families were looking for their parents, children, and neighbors. The families believed that the corpses of their loved ones were just right there in the endless acres of destruction, who were killed in the Israeli missile strikes.
Gaza streets were now more like graveyards, counting to more than five weeks into Israel's war against Hamas. Gaza officials admitted that they do not have the proper equipment, workforce, or force to search and rescue the survivors and the dead.
According to Toronto City News, the victims who were often found every day were Palestinians, and many have yet to be found. Omar al-Darawi and his neighbors, residents in Gaza, have been searching for weeks for the ruins of a pair of four-story houses in central Gaza.
Thirty-two people were killed in the forty-five people who lived in the homes, and 27 bodies were recovered in the first days after the attack. However, five of al-Darawi's cousins were still missing.
Amani, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mother, died with her husband and four children. Another Amani died with her 14-year-old daughter, while her husband and their five sons survived.
"The situation has become worse every day," a former college journalism student said. He also added that the smell has become unbearable.
He said that they could not stop looking for their families' bodies, and they just wanted to find and bury them properly before the bodies were gone entirely in the rubble.
The search has become difficult in northern Gaza as the Israeli ground forces have continued battling Hamas militants. Furthermore, Mahmoud Bassal, the spokesperson of the Palestinian Civil Defense department, Gaza's primary search-and-rescue force, has reported that more than two dozen workers have been killed and over 100 injured since the conflict started.
Bassal said their vehicles mostly ran out of fuel and had been damaged by the airstrikes. "At least five large bulldozers are needed just to search a series of collapsed high-rise buildings in the coastal town of Deir al-Balah," he added.
He said that they were more focused on rescuing areas with many survivors.
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Missing Bodies in Gaza
According to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, the attacks have killed more than 11,200 people, two-thirds of them women and children.
The UN Humanitarian Affairs Office reported that there were about approximately 2,700 people, including 1,500 children, were missing and believed buried in the wreckage.
According to AP News, most Muslims were missing, which adds to the pain of the families in Gaza. Islam demanded that the dead be buried quickly, within 24 hours if possible.
The authorities at the gravesite said that family members would wash the body with soap and scented water and prayers for forgiveness.
According to Bassal, Deir al-Balah's victims recorded ten corpses, which were still lost in the al-Salam Mosque, two dozen bodies were missing in a destroyed home, and ten were missing in another mosque attack.
