Looking down at her father’s body wrapped in a shroud outside Nasr Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, a little girl lamented: “Daddy … why did you leave us?”
Footage filmed by an NBC News crew on Thursday showed rows of body bags lying on the ground around him. Families gathered to mourn their loved ones whose remains were pulled from the rubble of homes and buildings during the Israeli military offensive in the Palestinian enclave.
Six days into a ceasefire and hostage release agreement between Israel and Hamas In effect, millions of displaced Palestinians have made their way back to their old homes. Many have found nothing but rubble where their neighborhoods once stood.
Israel carried out an attack that marked a major escalation in the decade-long conflict, according to Israel Teles. Initiated the attack.
More than 47,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since then, according to health officials in the enclave.
But Palestinian officials, the United Nations and aid agencies have warned that the death toll is likely to be much higher once bodies buried in the rubble are taken into account, although some may never be recovered.
In a statement published on Telegram on Thursday, Gaza’s Civil Defense Agency said the bodies of 162 people had already been found in various parts of the enclave since Sunday’s ceasefire went into effect.
It is feared that “thousands of bodies” are still buried in the debris, the statement said, adding that crews are facing difficulties in finding and retrieving them due to a lack of resources. It also includes “lack of heavy equipment and machinery”.
Outside Nasir Hospital, some of the body bags had the names and details of the men written on them. Others were left bare.
“No one could reach them because of the shelling,” Ismail Hussein Abu Reda told NBC News. Once the cease-fire was implemented, Reda, from Khoza, a village in Khan Yunis governorate near the border with Israel, said people began searching for their “loved ones.”
Drone video obtained by an NBC News crew earlier this week showed widespread destruction in the city of Rafah, further south, with homes covered in rubble for miles.
When he returned to the city to search his home, Walid Abu Labadeh, a 61-year-old engineer, told an NBC News crew on Wednesday that the level of destruction resembled “Hiroshima or Nagasaki,” the Japanese cities. Destroyed. The US nuclear bomb at the end of World War II.
“Where are the houses? Where are the trees? Where are the animals? Where are the people we love?” He said.
