Palestinians held a funeral procession on Sunday for 100 people, including 60 children, recovered from under the rubble of destroyed homes in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood amid Israel’s genocidal war on the enclave, Anadolu Ajansi reported.
Thousands of Palestinians, including relatives of the victims as well as community and political figures, attended the procession, with the bodies and remains laid out in an area near the ruins of the destroyed homes and draped in Palestinian flags.
The funeral included memorial addresses by Gaza’s Civil Defence, whose teams carried out the recovery operations, as well as representatives of the victims’ families and community figures.
The bodies and remains were expected to be buried at Al-Ahli cemetery in the Zeitoun neighbourhood after funeral prayers.
Civil Defence teams recovered them in recent days as part of the second phase of a project launched on July 19 to retrieve Palestinians still buried beneath the rubble of buildings destroyed during the Israeli war.
The victims belonged to the Rahim, Balawi, Malaka, Qanbour and Salmi families and were killed when Israeli forces struck several residential homes around two and a half years ago, according to local authorities.
Recovery operations are being carried out with limited resources, including only a small number of excavators and deteriorating equipment, amid Israeli restrictions on the entry of heavy machinery and equipment needed to search the rubble.
Delayed farewell
The funeral was marked by painful scenes as victims’ relatives finally mourned loved ones whom they had been unable to bid farewell since they were killed beneath the rubble.
Mahmoud Murtaja, who lost his wife, who was nine months pregnant, and 3-year-old daughter, said he had been awaiting the birth of his child when he received news that members of his family had been killed in the bombardment.
He told Anadolu that the remains of his wife, daughter and unborn child had lain beneath the rubble for nearly three years, saying their recovery “reopened the wound” because he had been unable to take one last look at them or embrace the child whose birth he had been awaiting.
“It is as though they were killed yesterday. Here they are before you, but you cannot embrace them or bid them farewell. All that remains are skulls and bones,” he said.
Limited resources
Gaza Municipal Council member Mustafa Quzaat said the scene embodied the suffering of victims who had remained beneath the rubble for more than two and a half years, including children, women and older people.
He told Anadolu that similar scenes could be repeated in other neighbourhoods if the necessary resources remain unavailable, noting that the war had erased entire families from the civil registry.
Raed al-Dahshan, director of civil defence in Gaza City, said the recovery operations had been “extremely gruelling and difficult” because of the scale of destruction and the shortage of heavy equipment.
He told Anadolu that around 60 children were among the victims whose bodies and remains were recovered, adding that the lack of equipment remained the main obstacle to accelerating search and recovery operations.
Sunday’s ceremony is among the largest funerals in Palestinian history in terms of the number of bodies and remains being buried, according to an Anadolu tally. A similar funeral was held in early August for 112 Palestinians recovered from the rubble of homes in Gaza City’s Sabra neighbourhood.
The second phase of the recovery project involves 800 hours of work at 147 destroyed homes across Gaza City and the northern and central parts of the enclave, where 1,072 bodies are believed to remain buried.
The first phase began in late November 2025 and involved 500 hours of work. Civil Defence teams recovered around 333 bodies and remains out of an estimated 559 missing beneath the rubble of 54 homes and buildings.
Under the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement, in effect since Oct 10, 2025, Israel was expected to allow the entry of heavy machinery and equipment needed for recovery operations, according to Palestinian authorities in the enclave.
The ceasefire followed nearly two years of Israeli attacks on Gaza, which killed more than 73,000 Palestinians and injured over 174,000, while destroying or damaging much of the enclave’s civilian infrastructure.
