More than 10,000 people remain missing under the rubble across the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7.
“We estimate that there are over 10,000 missing people under the rubble of hundreds of destroyed homes since the start of the (Israeli) aggression,” a statement by the Palestinian Civil Defence Service said, noting that those missing people are not included in the Health Ministry death toll list, therefore, the number of martyrs exceeds 44,000.
The Civil Defence received many initiatives from families and volunteer youth teams to support efforts to exhume the bodies of those killed and remain under a number of homes and residential buildings that were destroyed months ago.
Its rescue teams managed to recover bodies that were completely decomposed, from under the rubble from buildings in northern Gaza, it added.
Working with this antiquated mechanism will take two to three years, according to the Civil Defence, especially considering that UN officials estimated that the occupation’s bombing left at least 37 million tons of rubble and rubble in all the governorates of the Gaza Strip.
“The ongoing accumulation of thousands of bodies under the rubble has begun to cause the spread of diseases and epidemics,” the Civil Defence warned. “This is especially true with the onset of summer and the rise in temperatures, which accelerates the process of body degradation.”
As the Israeli occupation moves forward with its threat of a military invasion of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where there are approximately 1.4 million displaced people, Palestinian and international alarms are growing about the possibility of a notable rise in the number of casualties and unaccounted-for deaths.
Since October 7, the Israeli occupation army has waged a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, which has left an enormous humanitarian catastrophe and a major health and environmental disaster.
The Israeli aggression on Gaza constitutes a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and human rights, as it puts the lives of civilians, including women and children, at serious risk, and inflicts great suffering upon them.
