Gaza’s Civil Defense Forces Keep Digging for 10,000 Missing Bodies

The mission that haunts Nooh al-Shaghnobi the majority took place on September near the al-Saha area of eastern Gaza City Israeli forces had bombed a home killing more than members of one extended family The greater part of their bodies were trapped under the rubble Al-Shaghnobi s Gaza Civil Defense force organization pulled two dead young girls from the bombed house and kept digging crawling under collapsed floors We don t go under unless someone is alive he reported The Intercept Otherwise we dig from above ceiling by ceiling What followed was a descent into something dreamlike and horrifying We walked meters under the rubble he disclosed Every meter the air grew less I crawled past legs arms the body of a child hugging his dead mother I felt the ground shake from bombings above From deep inside the wreckage the group heard a young girl calling I m here I m here Related Trump s Gaza Ceasefire Deal Is Already Failing Palestinians The Civil Defense force is an exigency and rescue operations group administered by the Palestinian Minister of Interior After two years of Israeli genocide it has an estimated personnel and has lost roughly of its operating maximum Civil Defense workers recounted The Intercept In the absence of heavy equipment the civil defense teams use simple tools like hammers axes and shovels Without excavators or heavy equipment a single recovery can take days Local civil defense workers estimate there are still bodies buried under the rubble When you hear a voice you know there is life That s enough to make you menace your life to recover this soul What motivates us al-Shaghnobi announced is that when you hear a voice even one you know there is life That s enough to make you danger your life to recover this alive soul By the time al-Shaghnobi conclusively reached Malak she was unconscious with no pulse Her eyes open her legs blue she had passed away I tried to wake her up but it was too late al-Shaghnobi noted I was in a moment of utter stillness and I could hear nothing but my own breath Civil defense teams retrieve bodies in Al-Katiba on October Photo Nooh al-Shaghnobi -year-old al-Shaghnobi has already spent seven years working for Gaza s Civil Defense force Like plenty of of his colleagues he eats and sleeps at his workplace His family s home in the Tal Al-Hawa area of western Gaza City was destroyed in the final days of the war and his family remains displaced in the south People think the ceasefire means we can breathe he commented But for us the end of the war is the beginning of the real war pulling out the dead Al-Shaghnobi believes his aunt s corpse is among the bodies that remain unrecovered Large regions like Shujayaa and parts of Rafah are still inaccessible Israeli forces are stationed there marking the areas yellow zones Civil defense crews cannot reach them Related Gazans Reflect on Surviving to See a Ceasefire Sometimes We Envy the Martyrs We barely recovered specific bodies during this ceasefire al-Shaghnobi reported We have no machinery Specific areas we know there are hundreds under the rubble we exclusively can t go Alaa Khammash declared he feels terrible when his Civil Defense crew is unable to rescue someone When I am dispatched on a mission I feel a responsibility to finish it utterly I cannot just stop midway he announced It can take to hours to retrieve a single body if it s under a collapsed ceiling or wall Sometimes we can t recover the body since it necessities heavy equipment The years of genocide have left al-Shaghnobi feeling numb In the beginning of the war we couldn t look at the bodies al-Shaghnobi declared We would close our eyes when retrieving them By the middle of the war we were wrapping them in white shrouds like it was daily routine By the end of the war my emotions became more defeated The accumulation of pressure made it intricate to touch the bodies Bodies are identified in various states decomposed non-decomposed burnt or even evaporated sometimes just a skull or a skeleton he added The body s texture is soft and smooth when unveiled Civil defense organization members wear a special uniform gloves and masks because of the smell of the decaying bodies The bodies decompose rapidly when they re in the sun Khammash noted This occurs when a body lies exposed outdoors subject to sun and air Slow decomposition happens when the body is under a roof or shielded from air and sunlight The smell can make al-Shaghnobi lose his appetite for days For six months he has struggled with digestive issues Once during Ramadan I was fasting al-Shaghnobi stated We pulled a body that had been under rubble for a year in Al-Shifa hospital It was half-decomposed The smell hit me my vision blurred I nearly collapsed We identify locations of martyrs during the day based on blood stains bones and skulls al-Shaghnobi explained We rely on families of the martyrs They call our company often providing the equipment at their own personal expense to honor and bury their loved ones Without DNA tests the workers identify bodies from clothes shoes rings watches metal implants IDs and gold teeth The unknown bodies often only skulls or skeletons go to a cemetery for the unnamed After retrieving bodies the Civil Defense workers write a detailed paper describing the area angle building height measurement and burial location all written on the shroud so families can potentially identify the body later Sometimes families insist on seeing the remains to believe their loved one is gone People accept death more easily al-Shaghnobi explained when they see the body I moved my friend from one grave to another He was just a skull I moved my friend from one grave to another he mentioned recalling a reburial He was just a skull I kept thinking this is the end of every person Bones Recovering a person s body entails a strange emotional paradox mentioned -year-old Mohammad Azzam It feels good because you ascertained them he mentioned but bad because they are decomposed A feeling I cannot explain Families often wait nearby and when the group brings out the body their reactions are marked by intense overwhelming grief When we find someone they re usually half-decomposed Azzam declared The face is unrecognizable Only a shoe a wallet a bracelet tells you who they were When we find someone they re usually half-decomposed The workers manage these traumatic moments while living through the horrors of genocide in their own families and homes Khammash like al-Shaghnobi now lives at work His house in eastern Gaza City sits dangerously close to the Israeli military presence At work one day Khammash noted he got a dreaded call from a friend They explained me my brother had been injured in the south near the American aid distribution point and taken to al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat I called a friend of mine who works as a nurse there and he communicated me my brother had died Read our complete coverage Israel s War on Gaza It was unbearable My brother was not only my sibling he was my closest friend only a year younger than me he informed The Intercept We shared everything understood each other without speaking We went everywhere together That kind of loss never leaves you and the separation is the hardest pain Death is certain Khammash announced As Allah revealed Every soul shall taste death And as Muslims we understand that what comes after is far better than what we endure here During the ceasefire the rescue teams receive constant calls A neighbor reports a smell a family begs for help to retrieve their loved one a building is collapsing a limb has surfaced through the rubble flies gathering in a corner reveal what lies beneath Khammash has begun to feel death as a presence not an event It surrounds us he commented Maybe we are the next ones We accept Allah s plan but still inside us we love life One of the hardest missions Khammash has had under the ceasefire was in a bombed tower in the al-Rimal neighborhood A woman was alive somewhere under the collapsed top floor calling out but the rescuers couldn t locate her It was pitch black he recalled I kept moving my light trying to understand where her voice was coming from Suddenly she was beneath him I had put my foot next to her head without realizing We took her out alive The longest recovery Khammash ever worked took a full day pulling out Marah al-Haddad a girl buried beneath several floors in al-Daraj area a month ago She was alive when we reached her he stated She had been breathing dust and explosives My colleague Abdullah Al-Majdalawi and I kept calling Where are you Marah And she answered I m here I m here When she saw us hope came back to her face he commented To bring someone back from death this is what keeps us going The post Gaza s Civil Defense Forces Keep Digging for Missing Bodies appeared first on The Intercept