‘My daughter’s bones were scattered on the ground’ – the harrowing search for the missing of Gaza

Everything gets mixed up together. The child’s multi-coloured backpack. A running shoe. A steel pot perforated by shrapnel. Bits of beds, chairs, cookers, lampshades; the glass of broken windows, mirrors, drinking glasses. Scraps of clothing.

These last shredded, dust covered items can be markers. Often they belong to the dead lying near the surface of the rubble.

“Since the Israeli occupation forces withdrew from Rafah, we have had about 150 calls from civilians about the presence of their relatives’ bodies under houses,” says Haitham al-Homs, director of Emergency and Ambulance Services for the Civil Defence agency in Rafah, at the southernmost end of the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian health authorities estimate that 10,000 people are missing. Where there is no obvious marker like clothing at the surface, the search teams rely on information from relatives and neighbours, or they follow the smell of death that radiates from the ruins.

WARNING: This story contains distressing content