At Nasser hospital’s mass grave, mothers look for signs of their sons
Palestinians react after the body of a relative was found buried by Israeli forces in Nasser hospital in Khan Younis on 21 April 2024
Lubna Masarwa reports in Middle East Eye on 23 April 2024:
Moatasim Mortaja is a Palestinian video journalist in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. Over recent days, he has been documenting mass graves uncovered in Nasser hospital, where more than 300 bodies have been discovered since Israeli forces withdrew. On Monday, his video of a woman in grey holding the recently uncovered body of her son spread across social media. Here he describes the scene.
Hundreds of mothers have come here to the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. They are looking for their children, moving from body to body, inspecting each one with the greatest detail. They pass their eyes and their hands over the corpses, seeing if they are wearing a shirt, a pair of trousers, perhaps some shoes that will identify their child among the 300 people found in these mass graves. The mothers just need a simple, essential detail to recognise their sons. That was how the woman in grey found hers. The rest of his features had dissolved and disappeared.
Israel laid siege to Khan Younis for three months. Nasser hospital, the second largest in Gaza and the “backbone” of medical services in the south, became a haven for 10,000 Palestinians sheltering from attacks.