“My daughter’s bones were scattered on the ground”

Everything gets mixed up. Children’s multi-colored backpack. A running shoe. a steel pot pierced by shrapnel. Bed parts, chairs, kitchens, lampshades; broken window glass, mirrors, drinking glasses. Pieces of clothes.

These last dust-covered items can be markers. They are often dead bodies near the surface of the debris.

“Since the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation forces from Rafah, we have received about 150 calls from civilians about the bodies of their relatives under their houses,” says Haitham al-Homs, Director of Emergency and Ambulance Services at the Civil Defense Agency in Rafah. At the southern tip of the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian health authorities estimate that 10,000 people are missing. Where there are no visible markings such as clothing on the surface, search teams rely on information from relatives and neighbors, or follow the scent of death from the wreckage.

WARNING: This story contains disturbing content

The Israeli government has banned the BBC and other international news organizations from entering Gaza and conducting independent reporting. We depend on trusted local journalists to record the experiences of people like those searching for the missing.

At the end of each day, Homs updates the list of finds. His team carefully excavates the ruins, aware that they are searching for fragments of a broken humanity. Often what is recovered is nothing more than a pile of bones. Israeli high-explosive bombs exploded and dismembered many of the dead. The bones and pieces of clothing are placed in white body bags, on which Homs writes the Arabic word “majhoul.” It means “unidentified”.

A resident of Rafah, Osama Saleh, returned to his home after the ceasefire and found a skeleton inside. The skull was fractured. Mr. Saleh believes that the body was there for four or five months. “We’re human beings with feelings … I can’t tell you how unfortunate the tragedy is,” he says. Being surrounded by the smells of decomposing bodies on a daily basis is an unsettling experience, as those who have witnessed the effects of mass death will often testify.

“The bodies are scary. We are seeing horror,” says Osama Saleh. “I swear it’s a painful feeling, I cried.”

Families are also arriving at hospitals to look for remains. In the courtyard of the European Hospital in southern Gaza, collections of bones and clothing are spread out in body bags.

Abdul Salam al-Mughayer, 19, from Rafah, disappeared in the Shaboura area; According to uncle Zaki, if you went there during the war, it was a place you never came back from. “So we didn’t go there for that reason. We wouldn’t go back.”

Zaki believes that a set of bones and clothes in front of him belong to the missing Abdul Salam. He is with a hospital worker, Jihad Abu Khreis, waiting for Abdul Salam’s brother to arrive.

“We are 99% sure the body is his,” says Mr. Abu Khreis, “but now we need final confirmation from his brother, who is closest to him, to make sure the pants and shoes are his.”

Shortly after, Brother al-Mawasi arrived from the refugee camp, also in southern Gaza. He had a picture of Abdul Salam on his phone. There was a picture of his shoes.

He knelt in front of the body bag and pulled back the lid. He touched the skull, the clothes. He saw the shoes. He had tears in his eyes. The identification was complete.

Another family moved through the row of body bags. There was a grandmother, her son, an adult sister and a small child. The child was held at the back of the group while the elderly woman and her son peered under the cover of the body bag. They stared at each other for a few seconds and then hugged each other in grief.

After that, the family, assisted by the hospital staff, took the remains away. They were crying, but no one spoke aloud.

Aya al-Dabeh was 13 years old and lived with her family and hundreds of other refugees in a school in Tal al-Hawa, in the northern Gaza City. He was one of nine children. One day after the start of the war, Aya went to the toilet on the top floor of the school and – according to her family – an Israeli sniper shot her in the chest. The Israel Defense Forces say they do not target civilians and blame Hamas for attacking from civilian areas. During the war, the UN Human Rights Office said “there was intense shelling by Israeli forces in densely populated areas, resulting in apparently unlawful killings, including of unarmed people.”

The family buried Aya near the school, and her mother Lina al-Dabah, 43, wrapped her in a blanket “to protect her from the rain and sun” in case the grave was disturbed and exposed to the elements.

When the Israeli army took over the school, Lina fled to the south. She went with her four other children – two daughters and two sons – to meet her husband who had previously gone with the couple’s other children. Lina had no choice but to leave her daughter where she lay, hoping to recover the remains for a proper burial when peace came.

“Aya was a very kind girl, and everyone loved her. She loved everyone, her teachers and her studies, and she was very good at school. She wanted well for everyone,” says Lina. When the ceasefire came Lina asked relatives still living in the north to examine Aya’s grave. The news was devastating.

“They informed us that the head was in one place, the legs were in another, the ribs were in another place. The person who went to visit was surprised and sent us photos,” he says.

“When I saw it, I couldn’t understand how my daughter was taken out of her grave, and how the dogs ate her? I can’t control my nerves.”

The relatives have collected the bones and soon Lina and her family will go north to take Aya’s remains to a proper grave. For Lina, there is endless grief, and an unanswered question, the same question posed to so many parents who lost their children in Gaza. What could they have done differently, given the circumstances of the war? “I couldn’t take him from the place where he was buried,” says Lina. Then he asks, “Where could I take you?”

With additional reporting by Malak Hassouneh, Alice Doyard, Adam Campbell.