Bereaved Gazans dig out bodies from city ruins, give them graves

Nidal Al-Mughrabi - Reuters - 22/01
Guns may have fallen silent in Gaza, but for Mahmoud Abu Dalfa, the agony is not over. He is desperately searching for the bodies of his wife and five children trapped under the rubble of his house since the early months of the war.
  • 'All I want is a grave for them'
  • Around 200 bodies recovered since ceasefire took effect
  • Civil defence estimates 10,000 bodies yet to be recovered
  • Excavations challenged by lack of heavy machinery
CAIRO/GAZA, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Guns may have fallen silent in Gaza, but for Mahmoud Abu Dalfa, the agony is not over. He is desperately searching for the bodies of his wife and five children trapped under the rubble of his house since the early months of the war.
Abu Dalfa's wife and children were among 35 of his extended family who were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit the building in Gaza City's Shejaia suburb in December 2023, he said. As bombs continued to fall, only three bodies were retrieved.
"My children are still under the rubble. I am trying to get them out... The civil defence came, they tried, but the destruction makes it difficult. We don't have the equipment here to extract martyrs. We need excavators and a lot of technical tools," Abu Dalfa told Reuters.
"My wife was killed along with all my five children - three daughters and two sons. I had triplets," he said.
Burials are usually carried out within a few hours of death in Muslim and Arab communities, and failure to retrieve bodies and ensure dignified burials is agonizing for bereaved families.
"I hope I can bring them out and make them a grave. That's all I want from this entire world. I don’t want them to build me a house or give me anything else. All I want is a grave for them - to get them out and make them a grave," said Ab...
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