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In Gaza, many bodies are still buried under rubble. Crews have begun efforts to recover those bodies, including victims from one of the war's deadliest Israeli attacks back in late 2024. NPR investigated the attack on an apartment building in Gaza and mapped a family tree of 132 relatives killed there. An Israeli military commander told NPR the army would not have struck the building if it knew it was full of people. It took more than a year for survivors to be able to recover some of the bodies. NPR's reporter in Gaza, Anas Baba, witnessed the recovery efforts. He sends this report. And a warning - it includes graphic descriptions of these bodies.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRONE HOVERING)
ANAS BABA, BYLINE: An Israeli drone buzzes over a sea of debris. This all used to be homes. Many collapsed into mass graves. Until now, families have been searching for the bodies of their loved ones with their bare hands. Now, a crew has arrived with a huge orange excavator.
(SOUNDBITE OF EXCAVATOR DIGGING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Arabic).
BABA: This machine is digging through a mountain of heavy rubble in the destroyed town of Beit Lahia - a five-story apartment building destroyed in an Israeli attack. More than a hundred extended family members crushed inside. Ola Abu Naser survived.
OLA ABU NASER: (Through interpreter) Since the massacre about a year and a half ago, we've been dreaming every day of the moment we could recover the martyrs, honor them and bury them.
BABA: Ola documented all the victims from her family, from a 79-year-old grandfather to a 6-week-old baby girl. Many of the bodies were recovered from the rubble on the same day of the attack. But other bodies still remain deep in the rubble. The U.N. says more than 80% of Gaza's buildings were damaged or destroyed during the war. Gaza's civil defense team picked this site to be one of their first recovery efforts. Iyad Abu Jarad is in charge of the crew.
IYAD ABU JARAD: (Speaking Arabic).
BABA: "Every day, 10 to 15 families call me," he says. "They beg for help recovering bodies." But there is only one functioning excavator in Gaza for this kind of work, the Red Cross says. A second excavator was repaired recently. An Israeli security official who was not authorized to speak publicly told NPR that allowing more heavy machinery into Gaza poses security sensitivities. And Israel prevents major rehabilitation efforts until Hamas is disarmed. The recovery effort here is just the beginning.
(SOUNDBITE OF EXCAVATOR MOVING)
BABA: This is how most of the excavatiation (ph) here in Gaza are going - slowly, slowly. There is tons and tons of cement that needs to be moved away, which is an overload for the excaviator (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Arabic).
BABA: When the machine turns off, the gruesome work begins. Twenty rescue workers drop to their knees, leaning into the cracks, smelling the air to get closer to the corpses. After 90 minutes, they find the first one.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Speaking Arabic).
BABA: The rescue team just managed to recover the first body - Shawqi Abu Naser. He's 60 years old. And the family members recognized and identified him from his own jacket. What we have here is only - it's only clothes, bones. Most of the body is burned and shattered into pieces.
(SOUNDBITE OF ZIPPER)
BABA: The crew zips open each body bag for family members to identify the victims. It's mostly skeletons inside their clothing. There are no DNA tests here. There is only the survivor's eye. Ola helps with the identification.
O ABU NASER: (Through interpreter) It's like you're searching for a needle in a haystack. We wait for the moment they say they found someone. Our hearts tighten. Who could this body be?
BABA: A huge crowd gathers to watch, but by the end of the day, they only manage to pull four bodies from the debris. The orange excavator stays here overnight, parked on top of the ruins.
(SOUNDBITE OF EXCAVATOR MOVING)
BABA: The next day, the engine roars to life. The excavator digs deeper into the heart of the collapsed building. The crew finds more victims exactly as they were in the last moments of their life.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking Arabic).
BABA: The rescue crews just found out another body, and from the clothes, we can say that she's a woman. She was sleeping on her mattress, covered in her blanket, red blanket.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: (Speaking Arabic).
BABA: Oh, my God. The body is with a baby. She's a mother with her baby between her arms.
O ABU NASER: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: (Speaking Arabic).
BABA: Ola cries as her brother's body is pulled from the rubble. Sixteen-year-old Imad.
O ABU NASER: (Through interpreter) His hair is there. His glasses. Oh, God, brother.
BABA: She identifies him only by his hair and the broken pair of glasses still on his skull. By the end of Day 2, the crew recovered 20 more skeletons. On Day 3, the final search day, another 26 bodies are found. That leaves 20 more missing under the rubble. Ola's father, Moeen Abu Naser, sits in the ruins. His brother's body wasn't found.
MOEEN ABU NASER: (Through interpreter) I couldn't say goodbye. I couldn't help, and I feel helpless.
BABA: Another survivor is 29-year-old Aya Abu Naser.
AYA ABU NASER: (Speaking Arabic).
BABA: "My cousins, my aunt's daughters, my uncle's sons and daughters. Everyone I love. No one is left," she says. Gaza health officials count more than 73,000 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes. Thousands more are still believed to be missing in the rubble of their homes.
A ABU NASER: (Speaking Arabic).
BABA: "I never understood what the word genocide meant until my entire family was killed all at once," Aya says. Israel denies the accusations of genocide. It says its campaign in Gaza was necessary to defeat Hamas after the militant group killed more than 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, 2023. NPR's investigation of the Israeli strike on the Abu Naser family home found it was one of the deadliest of the war. Satellite imagery shows that weeks after the strike that destroyed the Abu Naser family building, there was more Israeli bombing. It nearly erased the rest of the neighborhood.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #11: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #12: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Speaking Arabic).
BABA: Family members and rescue workers recite prayers at the end of the search effort. They stand in a line next to 50 white body bags lined up on the dirt. Then they go to the cemetery.
(SOUNDBITE OF DIGGING)
BABA: The survivors dig new graves and lower into them bags of bones - bags that weigh almost nothing and that mean everything to them. Anas Baba, NPR News, northern Gaza.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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