🚨🎥 “We will finally give them the most basic human right: to honor them and lay them to rest.”
Hundreds gathered in Gaza City on Thursday for the mass funeral of 105 Palestinians killed on October 25, 2023, when Israeli forces dropped at least 20 bombs on the Al-Taj residential block and surrounding buildings in Yarmouk Square.
Nearly three years later, it took Civil Defense crews, aided by Egyptian teams, 20 days of searching and digging through the rubble to recover the remains.
“We were able to recover 105 martyrs: children, women, the elderly, patients, engineers, doctors, nurses, and academics,” Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Drop Site’s Mohamed Ahmed.
Basal said some 8,000 victims remain beneath destroyed buildings across Gaza and called for the entry of equipment and logistical support needed to recover them. “If things remain as they are, we are talking about many years in which these families will remain beneath the rubble.”
Sumaya Bakhit, who lost 15 members of her family beneath the Al-Taj building, said the remains of three of her brother’s children, ages 9, 5, and 2, were among those finally recovered.
“We have mixed emotions—sorrow, pain, but also joy,” Bakhit said. “The feelings of loss are impossible to describe.”
🎥 Mohamed Ahmed