On November 1, 2024, dusk fell over the Jabaliyah area in northern Gaza as an Israeli quadcopter broke the silence of the night.
That night, Mohammad Youssef Sharael had settled with his wife and children at his in-laws’ home after visiting 16 relatives who had taken shelter in a nearby family home. Little did he know that it would be the last time they would meet.
A “huge explosion” shook the area and Shalael’s house “completely collapsed.” When Shalael returned to the scene of the attack the next morning, “all four floors were on top of each other and collapsed on top of the people inside,” he said.
Among them were his elderly mother, two brothers and sister, their children and in-laws.
“I will never forget… discovering the mutilated bodies of a child and a woman,” he told CNN in late September. “I burst into tears but tried to hold on so I could collect the pieces of flesh that were scattered around me.”
Almost two years later, Shalael has not been able to return as Israeli forces have captured more than half of the shattered territory. He says almost his entire family is still missing.
Amid the ruins of Gaza, Palestinians say they are trying to survive a conflict with no clear end in sight.
Three years after Hamas and other extremist groups killed around 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, 2023, and a year after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire was supposed to end the ensuing Gaza war, Israeli airstrikes remain an almost daily occurrence. More than 74,000 people have been killed in the Israeli offensive in the coastal enclave, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. And that number is likely to increase significantly.
Some 8,000 people are reported missing, most likely buried under 61 million tons of rubble, estimated by the United Nations last year, according to the Gaza Civil Defense Authority.
And as the days passed, the chances of identifying the dead narrowed as “key evidence” was lost, said Pat Griffiths, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jerusalem.
Griffiths told CNN that under international humanitarian law, parties to an armed conflict have an obligation to “carry out search and recovery operations” for the remains of the dead, missing or injured, and to collect, preserve and communicate that information to the other side.
Three years later, missing people in Gaza are still buried under rubble.
Under the cease-fire plan for October 2025, Israeli forces were instructed to withdraw to the “Yellow Line”, which demarcates the occupied territory. The shifting border prevents Palestinians from accessing large areas of land where loved ones may be buried under the rubble, residents and aid workers say.
Several people in Jabaliya told CNN they saw Israeli forces destroying mosques, homes and buildings and clearing debris near the yellow line.
“Where are the bones of our loved ones?” asked Yahya Odeh, one of the residents. “Where are their bodies? Beyond the yellow line are whole families who have been separated from their relatives.”
In September, UN human rights chief Volker Türk warned against clearing debris “by bulldozers with no respect for the dead” in areas under Israeli military control, after the Geneva-based NGO Euromed Human Rights Monitor reported that such operations could erase evidence of war crimes.
Turk said the discovery of “what appears to be entire families” under rubble in areas accessible to Palestinians underscores the need to preserve evidence of possible war crimes, and called for international investigators to be allowed access to all of Gaza.
Meanwhile, Palestinian officials say Israel has restricted heavy equipment from entering the Gaza Strip, prolonging recovery efforts in parts of the enclave where Israeli troops are not currently present.
In August, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a 15-point plan that laid out a path to long-term stability in the Gaza Strip, insisting that Israeli forces would not withdraw “until Hamas is truly disarmed.” The militant group in turn demanded that Israeli forces stop attacking Gaza and return to the yellow line, as stipulated in the cease-fire plan.
Last year, an independent United Nations investigation found that Israel had committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, but the Israeli government rejected the findings.
In parts of the Gaza Strip that are accessible to Palestinians, civil defense workers are searching bombed houses and searching for bodies of missing people.
Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said field crews had recovered about 1,000 bodies from the rubble since October last year. But Bassal said only one excavator was available in Gaza City and another in central Gaza, adding that the operation could be “completed” if Israeli authorities provided the 10 excavators, 10 bulldozers and 30 trucks requested by the Palestinian authorities.
COGAT, the Israeli aid agency tasked with facilitating aid entry into Gaza, said Israel had allowed the entry of “essential equipment” such as engine oil, medical supplies and tents. However, according to Reuters, COGAT insisted that authorities withhold heavy equipment and reconstruction materials until Hamas is disarmed.
Mr Griffiths said the presence of unexploded ordnance made the recovery operation even more dangerous. Many rescue workers are “literally chipping away centimeters at a time,” he added.
Bassal said that when buried Palestinians are found, some show signs of being eaten by rodents or stray dogs. Sharael told CNN how she wrapped a blanket around her brother’s arm, which was sticking out of the rubble of their family home, to protect it from the “huge number” of wandering dogs. “It was a frightening sight,” he said.
“In the end, the family is trying to console themselves with the belief that all their relatives were rescued from under the rubble,” Basal said. “But we can’t say (that) for sure.”
Dr. Ahmad Dia is one of only three professional forensic scientists left in the enclave, he said.
Deer said that even before the war, doctors had no access to DNA testing facilities because years of blockade by Israel and Egypt restricted the import of medical supplies.
Medical workers are becoming more reliant on rudimentary identification techniques as Israel’s repeated attacks on health centers slow the eradication of Gaza’s medical infrastructure, Griffiths said.
As rescue teams transport unidentified bodies to hospitals, a lack of freezers, fuel shortages and frequent power outages can speed up samples deterioration, Diehl said.
With no DNA testing available, health workers rely on inconclusive blood type and laboratory tests, leaving many relatives in perpetual fear, he said.
Suha al-Sharif’s son Jihad was to take care of his mother in her old age. Instead, his absence is her only friend.
“When Jihad left, I realized that it was he who carried me. He was my strength,” the 55-year-old told CNN.
Jihad, 33, was shot dead on November 9, 2023, while his family was evacuating from Gaza City, al-Sharif said. The body was taken to al-Shifa hospital in the north, but medical staff were unable to bury it due to increased Israeli attacks. Once again the family was forced to flee south. Nearly three years later, Al-Sharif still hasn’t been able to find him. “The hardest part was not being able to bury him. I don’t know where his body is,” she said.
“When I put my head on the pillow at night, the memories come back,” she added. “There’s nothing to cry about anymore. I feel like my life is over.”
Her sense of dispossession mirrors that of many survivors of Gaza. Palestinians whose relatives are still missing are showing signs of “ambiguous loss,” two aid workers told CNN.
Israa al-Khawaji, Gaza mental health program coordinator for UK-based NGO Palestinian Medical Assistance, said some people prayed or saved photos and belongings of loved ones to “keep memories alive.” The desire to find human remains “reflects a very deep human desire for truth,” al-Khawaj said.
“Continuing to live does not mean abandoning or forgetting those we have lost,” she added.
The Cemetery of the Disappeared in Deir al-Bala, as the locals call it, has become a totem of the unknown fates of hundreds of Palestinians.
According to the Gaza Civil Defense Authority, about 1,000 unidentified people are buried here. Authorities are working with international aid agencies to create a digital information-sharing system that could assign serial numbers to unnamed graves and enable DNA testing, allowing loved ones to identify their relatives in the coming years.
“We believe that these people and their families have the right, as a matter of human dignity, to find their loved ones,” Dear said.
Sharael hopes to one day find a family and sleep with dignity. “For us in Gaza, there is a well-known saying: ‘Honoring the dead means burying them. Our religion, customs and traditions teach that when someone dies, they should be buried and the place of burial should be known.’
