Palestinian Civil Defense: More than 8,000 bodies remain under the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza - Sarmad

Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip, stated that more than 8,000 bodies remain trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings across various areas of the Strip, amid significant difficulties facing rescue teams.

Basal explained that the Engineers’ Tower, located near Al-Sharq Al-Sharqi Street north of the Nuseirat refugee camp, was subjected to Israeli shelling during the war, noting that the tower had housed more than 350 civilians and displaced persons at the time.

He added that Civil Defense teams have recovered approximately 160 bodies from the tower site since the beginning of the war, while search operations continue in an effort to reach the remaining victims believed to still be under the building’s rubble.

Basal indicated that teams are unable to determine the time required to complete search and recovery operations for the remaining victims, due to the volume of debris, the nature of the damage at the site, and a severe shortage of necessary equipment and machinery.

He emphasized that search and recovery operations at the Engineers’ Tower are being conducted with very limited resources, clarifying that Civil Defense is operating at the site with only a single excavator, which severely restricts the teams’ capacity to remove large quantities of rubble and access areas where victims’ bodies may be located.

These operations take place amid the continued presence of thousands of bodies under the rubble of destroyed buildings in different parts of the Gaza Strip, as Civil Defense teams face challenges in reaching affected sites and managing the debris, making search and recovery efforts arduous and slow, and delaying the identification of those still missing.