Families dig by hand to retrieve bodies buried in Gaza rubble

GAZA: The wreckage goes on for block after devastated block. The smell is sickening. Every day, hundreds of people claw through tons of rubble with shovels and iron bars and their bare hands.

They are looking for the bodies of their children. Their parents. Their neighbours. All killed in Israeli missile strikes. The corpses are there, somewhere in endless acres of destruction.

More than five weeks into Israel’s war against Hamas, some streets are now more like graveyards. Officials in Gaza say they don’t have the equipment, manpower or fuel to search properly for the living, let alone the dead.

Hamas, the militant group behind the deadly October 7 attack that killed about 1,200 people in Israel, has many of its bases within Gaza’s crowded neighbourhoods. Israel is targeting those strongholds.But the victims are often everyday Palestinians, many of whom have yet to be found.

Omar al-Darawi and his neighbours have spent weeks searching the ruins of a pair of four-story houses in central Gaza. 45 people lived in the homes; 32 were killed. In the first days after the attack, 27 bodies were recovered.

More than 11,400 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities.