One excavator, 10,000 bodies, a sea of rubble: inside Gaza’s effort to retrieve and bury its dead
Palestinian crews in Gaza dig mass graves amidst a campaign to recover the remains of bodies that have been trapped under the rubble of buildings since the start of the genocide. December 2025
Tareq S. Hajjaj reports in Mondoweiss on 25 December 2025 :
Fatima Salem waits outside anxiously, as rescue crews dig through the rubble of her family’s home in Gaza City on December 15th. With bated breath, she clings to the hope that all 60 of her family members – brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren – who were buried under the rubble after an Israeli airstrike targeted their building, will be rescued.
But this was not a typical rescue operation, and Fatima was not waiting for signs of life. She knew everyone was dead. That’s because the airstrike on her family’s home happened almost exactly two years ago, on December 19, 2023, just two months into the genocide.
The 60 members of the Salem family are some of an estimated 10,000 Palestinians whose bodies remain trapped under the extensive rubble across the Gaza Strip. Due to two years of active Israeli bombardment, the targeting and killing of civil defense crews, and the lack of heavy duty machinery required to excavate the tons of concrete rubble, rescue missions in Gaza have been largely stalled.
Members of the Salem family stand next to a mass grave of their family members who were killed in December 2023 and recently recovered by civil defense crews. Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. December 2025
But on December 15, the Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip announced the start of a long recovery process of bodies that have remained under the rubble for two years. The operations are focused only on the areas in the Gaza Strip not actively being occupied by the Israeli military, which accounts for roughly half of the territory.
The first rescue mission was for the Salem family in Gaza City.
“Here I lost every person dear to me; they are the closest people to me—my brothers and sisters and their families. I lost everyone in this place,” Fatima Salem cried. When she heard about the rescue mission, she rushed to the scene of the destroyed building, where the souls of her relatives had remained trapped for two years.