{"id":56056,"date":"2025-11-08T09:38:42","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T17:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=56056"},"modified":"2025-11-08T09:38:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T17:38:42","slug":"10000-palestinians-buried-beneath-gaza-rubble-in-worlds-largest-mass-grave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/08\/10000-palestinians-buried-beneath-gaza-rubble-in-worlds-largest-mass-grave\/","title":{"rendered":"10,000+ Palestinians Buried Beneath Gaza Rubble in \u2018World\u2019s Largest Mass Grave\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

A civil society group in Gaza<\/a> on Thursday appealed for international assistance to help recover the bodies of more than 10,000 Palestinians<\/a> killed by Israeli forces who remain buried beneath the rubble of the flattened strip.<\/p>\n

Referring to<\/a> Gaza<\/a> as \u201cthe world\u2019s largest mass grave,\u201d Aladdin Al-Aklouk, a spokesperson for the National Committee for Missing Persons in the Genocide<\/a> Against Gaza, said<\/a> that \u201cthese martyrs were buried under the rubble of their homes, which have turned into mass graves, without their final dignity being preserved or their bodies being retrieved.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe express our shock and strong condemnation of the absence of an effective role by international organizations and humanitarian bodies, especially those concerned with the issue of missing persons, in light of the ongoing escalating humanitarian disaster,\u201d Al-Aklouk continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe remnants are ticking time bombs and pose a danger to the population in the Gaza Strip. We need specialists alongside the teams working in the sector,\u201d he added. \u201cWe call on the world to send international teams to recover the bodies of the missing. We call on the world to provide the necessary equipment to recover the bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Gaza Health Ministry \u2013 whose casualty figures have been deemed accurate<\/a> by Israeli military officials and a likely undercount<\/a> by multiple peer-reviewed studies \u2013 at least 68,875 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7, 2023. Although a US-brokered ceasefire technically remains in effect, Gaza officials have documented over 200 Israeli violations in which more than 240 Palestinians have been killed and over 600 others injured.<\/p>\n

More than 170,600 other Gazans have been wounded in a war which is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice<\/a> genocide case<\/a> and for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a> and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant<\/a> are wanted by the International Criminal Court<\/a> for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes<\/a>, including murder and forced starvation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Palestinians are struggling<\/a> to dig through more than 60 million tons of debris after over 80% of all structures in Gaza were destroyed or damaged by two years of Israeli bombardment. That\u2019s more than 200,000 buildings and other structures.<\/p>\n

United Nations<\/a> experts estimate<\/a> it will take seven years for 100 trucks to remove all debris across Gaza, where more than three-quarters of roads are damaged and unexploded ordnance and Israeli booby traps beneath the debris continue to pose deadly threats to recovery workers<\/a> and survivors in general.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s destruction and denial<\/a> of the heavy equipment needed for such a monumental recovery operation has left Palestinians reliant upon rudimentary tools such as shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows, rakes, hoes, and even their bare hands. They dig amid the stench of death and decomposition that lingers in the air.<\/p>\n

The Abu Naser family lost more than 130 members<\/a> in an October 29, 2024 strike on their five-story home in Beit Lahia, where over 200 people were sheltering when it was bombed. Mohammed Nabil Abu Naser, who survived the bombing, immediately started digging through the rubble, first in search of survivors and later, for bodies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was all bodies and body parts,\u201d he explained. More than a year later, many of the victims have yet to be recovered.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout 50 of them are still under the rubble to this day, a full year later,\u201d Abu Naser told<\/a> The Guardian<\/em> on Monday.<\/p>\n

Often, Gazans survived initial bombings only to die slowly trapped beneath rubble. Two American volunteer surgeons, Drs. Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa, last year described<\/a> how wounded survivors suffered \u201cunimaginably cruel deaths from dehydration and sepsis while trapped alone in a pitch-black tomb that alternates as an oven during the day and a freezer at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne shudders to think how many children<\/a> have died this way in Gaza,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A civil society group in Gaza on Thursday appealed for international assistance to help recover the bodies of more than 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces who remain buried beneath the rubble of the flattened strip. Referring to Gaza as \u201cthe world\u2019s largest mass grave,\u201d Aladdin Al-Aklouk, a spokesperson for the National Committee for Missing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[806],"class_list":["post-56056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"\u201cWe call on the world to send international teams to recover the bodies of the missing,\u201d said the member of one civil society group. \u201cWe call on the world to provide the necessary equipment to recover the bodies.\u201d"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56056"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56061,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56056\/revisions\/56061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56056"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=56056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}