Thousands of Palestinians gathered in Gaza City on 4 August 2026 to bury the remains of 112 people recovered from beneath destroyed residential buildings. The victims were members of the Abu Sharia and al-Hasayna extended families, who were reportedly killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City’s Sabra neighbourhood in November 2023. Their remains remained trapped beneath the rubble for almost three years before Gaza’s Civil Defence teams were able to retrieve them.
The funeral was one of the largest mass burial ceremonies held in Gaza since the war began. At least 40 small coffins were reportedly placed among the 112 remains, while bodies wrapped in Palestinian flags were carried through streets surrounded by flattened buildings. The ceremony was simultaneously a religious burial, a family gathering and a public reminder that thousands of people killed during the war have not yet been recovered or formally identified.
Palestinian authorities said the victims were killed when Israeli warplanes destroyed residential buildings in Sabra on 22 or 23 November 2023. Reports differ over the precise date, while the Israel Defense Forces has not issued a specific public explanation of what was targeted in the attack. The available reporting therefore contains a clear Palestinian account of the strike but no equivalent Israeli explanation addressing the identities of the victims or the military objective involved.
The scale behind 112 recovered remains
The 112 people buried in August represented only part of the death toll at the site. Palestinian authorities said more than 300 people were killed in the attack, with Gaza officials citing a total of 308 members of the two families. The Civil Defence said that approximately 157 victims remained missing beneath the rubble, although some reports gave the figure as 153 or described the number simply as dozens.
The recovered remains reportedly included 40 children, 30 or 38 women and seven people with disabilities. The differences in the number of women and children reported by different outlets reflect the difficulties of identification after prolonged burial, decomposition and the destruction of bodies in the initial blast. The L’Orient Today report cited 44 children, while BBC, Arab News and other accounts generally cited 40.
These discrepancies should not be interpreted as evidence that the tragedy is being exaggerated or minimised. Rather, they demonstrate how difficult it has become to maintain accurate records in Gaza, where hospitals, municipal offices, civil registries and family homes have been destroyed or severely damaged. In some cases, entire families were killed, leaving nobody available to report a person missing.
Zaher al-Waheidi, head of the Gaza Health Ministry’s records department, said that approximately 7,400 people had been reported by relatives as still missing and presumed buried under the rubble. He warned that the real figure could be considerably higher because some families had been wiped out in single attacks, leaving no surviving relative to submit a missing-person report.
Gaza Civil Defence has separately estimated that approximately 8,000 bodies remain trapped beneath collapsed buildings across the territory. These figures are estimates rather than a fully verified list of identified victims. They include people believed to have died but whose remains have not been recovered, examined or officially registered.
Excavation without adequate equipment
The recovery of the 112 bodies required approximately 136 hours of excavation over 17 days. First responders worked through layers of concrete, steel and household debris, using limited heavy machinery and manual tools. About 40 bodies were reportedly recovered soon after the original strike, but most were buried too deeply for rescuers to reach them at the time.
Gaza’s Civil Defence described the operation as a painstaking search conducted under severe resource constraints.
“Our teams worked non-stop for 17 days.”
— Mohammad al-Moughayyir, Gaza Civil Defence operations director
The recovery effort was supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which helped provide two excavators. Yet the fact that such a large operation depended on only a small number of machines reveals the depth of Gaza’s equipment crisis. Heavy excavators, fuel, spare parts, protective gear, forensic facilities and safe access routes are all required to recover bodies from collapsed structures.today.
Some remains were reportedly incomplete or impossible to identify individually because the victims had been pulverised by the explosion, degraded over time or mixed with surrounding building materials.
“We recovered 112 bodies over 17 days under extremely difficult conditions with no resources, no capabilities, and no equipment apart from a single excavator working alongside our teams.”
— Gaza Civil Defence
The statement places the funeral within a wider humanitarian emergency. The problem is not simply that Gaza has many dead. It is that the territory lacks the practical capacity to locate, identify and bury them. A ceasefire may reduce immediate violence, but it cannot by itself restore the institutions and infrastructure required to deal with the consequences of mass destruction.
Grief without complete closure
For the victims’ families, the funeral created an opportunity to perform religious rites and publicly acknowledge relatives who had effectively disappeared. However, the ceremony did not resolve the fate of everyone who died at the site. Many families still do not know whether missing relatives remain beneath the ruins, were buried elsewhere or were reduced to fragments that cannot be individually identified.
Ahmed Abu Sharia, a relative of some of the victims, described the ceremony as mourning for more than one extended family.
“We came to mourn our martyrs, our children, our women and our elderly. This is a burial for the Palestinian people.”
— Ahmed Abu Sharia
He also stressed that the victims were civilians.
“They did not fight and carried no weapons.”
— Ahmed Abu Sharia
That statement is central to the political and legal meaning of the funeral. The victims’ relatives present the site as a residential area where children, women, elderly people and people with disabilities were killed. Israel, however, has not publicly provided a detailed account in the available reports of the intended target or the intelligence behind the strike.
A relative quoted in the reporting said that some victims had been reduced to bones, flesh and fragments mixed with concrete. Such conditions make conventional identification extremely difficult and leave families with incomplete answers. A grave containing partial remains may provide a place for mourning, but it cannot necessarily establish the fate of every person who lived in the destroyed buildings.
Why a ceasefire does not end the humanitarian crisis
The funeral demonstrates the difference between ending active hostilities and ending the humanitarian consequences of war. A ceasefire can create a temporary reduction in violence, but families may continue to live beside destroyed homes containing the remains of loved ones. Rescue workers may still lack machinery, and hospitals may still lack the facilities needed for identification and forensic examination.
A joint assessment by the World Bank, the European Union and the United Nations estimated that approximately 68 million tonnes of rubble were spread across Gaza. The assessment also found that more than 60% of Gaza’s population had lost its home. This destruction makes recovery an enormous logistical undertaking rather than a short-term emergency operation.
The rubble itself presents additional dangers. Buildings may be unstable, unexploded ordnance may remain buried, and roads needed by rescue teams may be destroyed. The United Nation system has previously warned that thousands of missing people may be buried beneath Gaza’s ruins, while humanitarian organisations have repeatedly called for access to heavy machinery and specialised recovery teams.
The issue is therefore not limited to the dead. The same equipment needed to recover bodies is also required to clear roads, inspect damaged buildings, repair water systems and enable the return of displaced people. The delay in recovering remains is one part of a broader reconstruction crisis in which humanitarian relief, public safety and accountability are inseparable.
Dignity, identification and the right to know
The International Committee of the Red Cross has framed the recovery of remains as a humanitarian responsibility linked to the rights and dignity of surviving families.
“For more than two and a half years, thousands of families in Gaza have lived in pain and uncertainty, waiting for the chance to recover the remains of their loved ones, mourn them and lay them to rest with dignity.”
— Amani Al-Naouq, International Committee of the Red Cross spokesperson
She added:
“The search for missing persons and the recovery of human remains is a critically important humanitarian issue.”
— Amani Al-Naouq
These statements underline why the recovery of bodies should not be treated as a secondary issue after food, shelter and medical care. Families have a legitimate need to know what happened to their relatives, while reliable identification is essential for death registration, inheritance claims, family reunification records and future investigations.
The absence of remains can also distort the historical record. If a person is never identified, that death may disappear from official statistics or remain classified as an unresolved disappearance. Over time, the lack of documentation can make it more difficult to establish patterns of attack, determine the civilian impact of military operations or pursue accountability.
Questions of accountability
The available reporting does not establish legal responsibility for the Sabra attack by itself. A proper investigation would need to determine whether the buildings were being used for a military purpose, what target Israeli forces intended to strike, what information was available to commanders and whether feasible precautions were taken to protect civilians.
International humanitarian law requires parties to distinguish between civilians and combatants, avoid disproportionate attacks and take precautions to reduce civilian harm. The reported presence of large numbers of children and women raises serious questions, but the final legal assessment would depend on evidence that is not currently publicly available.
The IDF’s lack of a specific response leaves an important gap in the record. The BBC said it sought information about what was targeted but had not received a response, while the Times of Israel also reported that the Israeli military had not commented on the specific alleged strike.
This silence cannot by itself prove that the attack was unlawful. It does, however, reinforce the need for independent access, transparent investigations and the preservation of evidence. Without such investigations, families are left with competing narratives and no authoritative account of why their relatives died.
A mass funeral as a form of testimony
The burial of 112 people nearly three years after their deaths demonstrates that Gaza’s war continues to produce new revelations long after individual attacks have ended. The death toll is not fixed because bodies are still being found, names are still being confirmed and families are still discovering what happened to missing relatives.
The ceremony gave dignity to those whose remains were recovered, but it also exposed the limits of that achievement. At least 157 people connected to the same site were still missing, while thousands more were believed to remain under rubble elsewhere in Gaza. The burial was therefore both a moment of closure and evidence of how incomplete that closure remains.
This is why mass funerals in Gaza reveal the failure of ceasefires to deliver a meaningful end to suffering. A genuine humanitarian recovery would require more than a pause in fighting. It would require safe access for rescue teams, heavy machinery, forensic support, accurate records, independent investigations and long-term reconstruction.
Until those conditions exist, each funeral will remain a farewell to the dead and a demand for answers from those responsible for Gaza’s destruction.
