‘My daughter’s bones were scattered on the ground’ – the painful search for the missing in Gaza

Everything comes together. Kid’s multicolored backpack. A running shoe. Steel vessel pierced by shrapnel. Fragments of beds, chairs, cookers, lampshades; Broken window panes, mirrors, drinking glasses. Pieces of clothing.

These final cut, dust-covered objects may have been markers. Often they consist of the dead lying near the surface of the debris.

Haitham al-Homs, director of emergency and ambulance services for the Civil Protection Agency in Rafah, says, “Since the Israeli occupation forces withdrew from Rafah, we have received about 150 calls from citizens about the presence of bodies of their relatives under their houses. Found.” At the southernmost tip of the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian health officials estimate that 10,000 people are missing. Where there are no obvious marks such as clothing on the surface, search teams rely on information from relatives and neighbours, or they detect the smell of death coming from the ruins.

Warning: This story contains disturbing content

The Israeli government has banned the BBC and other international news organizations from entering Gaza and reporting independently. We rely on trusted local journalists to record the experiences of people like those who are searching for missing people.

At the end of each day, Mr. Holmes updates the list of people found. His team carefully excavates the debris, knowing that they are discovering pieces of broken humanity. Often what is recovered is nothing more than a pile of bones. Israeli high explosive bombs detonated and blew many of the dead into pieces. The bones and pieces of clothing are placed in a white body bag, on which Mr. Holmes writes the Arabic word “Majhoul”. It means “unknown”.

Osama Saleh, a resident of Rafah, returned to his home after the ceasefire and found a skeleton inside. The skull was broken. Mr Saleh believes the body remained there for four to five months. He says, “We are human beings with feelings…I can’t tell you how tragic this tragedy is.” Being surrounded by the smell of rotting bodies every day is an extremely disturbing experience, as those who Those who have witnessed mass deaths will often testify to this.

Osama Saleh says, “The bodies are terrible. We are witnessing terror.” “I swear it’s such a painful feeling, I’ve cried.”

Families are also reaching hospitals to search for the remains. In the courtyard of the European hospital in southern Gaza, a collection of bones and clothing is spread out on body bags.

Abdul Salam al-Mughayer, 19, of Rafah, disappeared in the Shaboura area; According to his uncle Zaki, it was a place from which you could not come back if you went there during the war. “So, we did not go there looking for him for that reason. We will not return.”

Zaki believes that a set of bones and clothes in front of him belong to the missing Abdul Salam. He stands with hospital worker Jihad Abu Khrais and waits for Abdul Salam’s brother to arrive.

Mr Abu Khrais says, “It is 99% certain that the body is his, but now we need final confirmation from his brother, the people closest to him, to make sure that the trousers and shoes are his.”

Shortly thereafter the brother arrived from the tented refugee camp of al-Mawasi in southern Gaza. There was a photo of Abdul Salam in his phone. There was a photo of his running shoes in it.

She knelt down in front of the body bag and pulled back the covers. He touched the skull, the clothes. He looked at the shoes. There were tears in his eyes. The identification was complete.

Another family moved forward with a line of body bags. There was a grandmother, her son, an adult sister, and a baby. The child was kept at the back of the group while the elderly woman and her son watched from behind the body bag. They looked at each other for a few seconds and then hugged each other in grief.

After this, the family took away the remains with the help of hospital staff. They were crying, but no one cried loudly.

Aya al-Dabeh was 13 years old and living with her family and hundreds of other refugees in a school in Tal al-Hawa, north of Gaza City. She was one of nine children. One day early in the war, Aya went to the bathroom upstairs at school and – her family says – was shot in the chest by an Israeli sniper. The Israel Defense Forces say they do not target civilians and accuse Hamas of attacking from civilian areas. During the war the UN Human Rights Office said that “there was intense shelling by Israeli forces in densely populated areas, resulting in manifestly unlawful killings, including of unarmed bystanders.”

The family buried Aya next to the school, and her 43-year-old mother Lina al-Dabaa wrapped her in a blanket “to protect her from rain and sun” in case the grave was disturbed and exposed to the elements.

When Israeli forces captured the school, Lena fled to the south. She accompanied four other children – two daughters and two sons – to reunite with her husband, who had left earlier along with the couple’s other children. Lina had no choice but to leave her daughter where she lay, hoping to return when peace came and retrieve the remains for a proper burial.

Lena says, “Aya was a very kind girl and everyone loved her. She loved everyone, her teachers and her studies, and she was very good at school. She wanted the best for everyone.” When the armistice came, Lina asked relatives still living in the north to check on Aya’s grave. The news was devastating.

She says, “They told us that his head was in one place, his legs were in another place, while his ribs were somewhere else. Everyone who went to meet him was amazed and sent us pictures.”

“When I saw her, I couldn’t understand how my daughter was taken out of her grave and eaten by dogs. I can’t control my nerves.”

Relatives have collected the bones and soon Lina and her family will travel north to take Aya’s remains to a proper grave. For Lina, there is no end to the grief, and a question that has no answer – the same question that plagues many parents who have lost their children in Gaza. What could they have done differently, the circumstances of the war being what they were? “I couldn’t take him from where he was buried,” says Lena. Then she asks: “Where could I have taken him?”

With additional reporting by Malak Hassouneh, Alice Doyard, Adam Campbell.