Although the number of people killed in Gaza continues to rise, this figure does not include some 13,000 victims who are missing.
Many are believed to be buried under rubble, but human rights organizations say others may have been subject to “forced disappearance.”
Ahmed Abu Duke has been searching for his brother Mustafa for months.
The family had taken refuge in the courtyard of the Nasser Hospital, in the southern city of Khan Yunis, seeking to escape the conflict.
But when they learned that their house, located nearby, had been devoured by fire, Mustafa went to see what was left of the property. He never returned.
“We looked for everything we could,” says Ahmed, explaining that where there were once houses, there were now only charred and burned remains.
“The surrounding area was devastated and multi-story buildings were demolished,” he says.
The family searched for Mustafa, a retired ambulance driver, among the bodies that the Hamas-led Gaza Civil Defense team had recovered from the rubble and nearby mass graves, but could not find him.
“We still hope to find him in an ambulance that arrives at the hospital”says Ahmed.
Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry says the number of people killed in the conflict so far exceeds 35,000, but this figure only includes deaths recorded in hospitals.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based nonprofit human rights organization, estimates that since then they have also about 13,000 people disappeared, who were lost without a trace.
This statistic does not differentiate between civilians and Hamas fighters, a group that launched a cross-border attack against Israel on October 7 in which some 1,200 people died and 252 were taken hostage.
Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza.
The debris trap
There are many families, like Mustafa’s, who are facing uncertainty about what has happened to their loved ones who went missing over the past seven months.
The Gaza Civil Defense, which is part of the security services of the Palestinian Authority, estimates that more than 10,000 of them could be buried under the rubble.
The UN estimates the volume of debris in the Gaza Strip at around 37 million tonnes, beneath which many bodies and approximately 7,500 tonnes of unexploded ordnance remain, posing an additional danger to rescuers and volunteers.
The Civil Defense says its teams work with volunteers to extract bodies from under the rubble, but they have only simple tools and it is often difficult to reach the dead.
There are also concerns that leaving bodies unrecovered and decomposing, as Gaza heads into its warmer months, could trigger a health disaster.
Abdul Rahman Yaghi has faced the challenge of trying to recover his relatives from the rubble.
His family’s three-story property in the central Gaza city of Deir Al-Balah was hit by a missile on February 22 while 36 members of his family were inside.
17 bodies were found, but body parts, which were also recovered, cannot be identified.
“We didn’t find the bodies of most of the children who were in the house,” he says.
The Civil Defense has asked for international support from the United Nations and countries with experienced teams to help recover the bodies.
He called on international organizations to “immediately intervene” and pressure Israel to allow heavy equipment into Gaza to help with rescue efforts, but says he has not yet received a response.
Amnesty International believes that other people, who have apparently disappeared, may have been detained by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) without the knowledge of their families, which they describe as “forced disappearances”.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor estimates that hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza are being held by the IDF without their families being informed.
The Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a signatory, stipulate that a country must report the identity and location of detained civilians.
Israeli authorities suspended visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to detention centers following the October 7 attacks.
Hisham Muhanna, of the ICRC in Gaza, says he has “repeatedly asked for access to Palestinian detainees… but the committee has not yet been allowed in.”
The ICRC adds that it has also not been allowed to visit Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
The BBC asked the IDF for comment, but they did not respond.
However, in a post on of those who kidnapped us in Gaza: humanitarian versus just humanitarian!”
Hope
In the city of al-Zawaida in central Gaza, another family is searching for another missing son. They fear that he could be one of the “forced disappearances.”
With a photograph in her hand, Mohamed Ali’s mother searched for him until someone told her that he was being held by the IDF. They said he was alive the last time they saw him, but they don’t know what has happened to him since then.
Mohamed has been missing since December 23, when the family left their home to take refuge in a school in Jabalia, northern Gaza, during intense bombing.
But Israeli soldiers entered the school and ordered the women and children to leave, says Mohamed’s wife, Amani Ali.
He adds that all the men returned to their families that night, except Mohamed.
His whereabouts and what happened to him are unknown.
Amani notes that she doesn’t know whether she should think her husband is dead or has been detained by the IDF, which she says offers her some hope that he is alive.
“If he was alive and free, he would have searched for us and found us,” Amani is convinced.
The Ministry of Health created an online form for relatives of the dead and missing to complete in order to create a more detailed record of what has happened to those who have disappeared since October 7.
Until then, many families will continue searching for their loved ones.
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