What are the most prominent obstacles to reaching thousands of bodies under the rubble of Gaza? | news

The remains of thousands of victims are still there Gaza Strip Under the rubble due to the inability of local recovery teams to work in the targeted sites during the war, and due to the absence of heavy machinery and the Israeli occupation preventing their entry.

A report by Salam Khadr on Al Jazeera documented the details of nearly 10,000 bodies remaining under the rubble of buildings and facilities destroyed by Israeli fighters during the war of genocide on the Gaza Strip. Families were buried under the rubble along with their names, details of their lives and memories, and those who remained were deprived of even a grave that would allow them to bury the remains of their families in a dignified manner.

The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip estimates that more than 10,000 bodies are still under the rubble or unaccounted for, whether alive or dead. In the midst of the Israeli military operations and systematic destruction, the intervention and recovery agencies in the Strip lost the logistical ability to work in the air targeting areas, and the ammunition used by the Israeli army turned any building into rubble, which is difficult to work on to recover victims without the availability of heavy machinery.

The Government Information Office in Gaza estimates the volume of rubble in the Strip at more than 60 million tons, and it is likely that the areas with the highest density of destruction were buried under the majority of the victims.

Unexploded ordnance adds to the complications of recovering bodies from under the rubble.

United Nations data estimates that nearly 7,000 tons of unexploded ordnance pollutes the Gaza Strip’s areas, and that in itself poses a direct danger to search and recovery teams and to the survival of the remains as well.

While Israel obstructs the introduction of the necessary mechanisms to recover the remains of Palestinian victims from under the rubble, the search process with primitive tools becomes useless. Even if any remains are found, the mechanism for identifying them will not be available through DNA tests, as this technology is not available in forensic laboratories in the Gaza Strip, and Israel prevents its entry.

Al Jazeera’s report indicates that these factors combined will turn the task of retrieving victims from under the rubble into a long-term nightmare with ambiguous endings.

The report states that the only exception that might rule out this scenario is for Israel to allow the entry of heavy equipment and DNA testing tools into the Strip.