Key facts
- Gaza's civil defense recovered 19 bodies from a destroyed residential building in Gaza City.
- Most of the recovered bodies were women and children.
- Recovery efforts are severely limited by a lack of heavy machinery.
- Over 8,000 people remain missing under the rubble across Gaza.
- The overall death toll in Gaza since October 2023 exceeds 73,300.
Gaza's civil defense has recovered the remains of 19 Palestinians, predominantly women and children, from the rubble of a destroyed residential building in Gaza City. The recovery operation, which concluded on Saturday after four days of work at the "Karam" building, is part of a slow, largely manual campaign to retrieve bodies from beneath the ruins.
Officials have stated that recovery efforts are significantly hampered by a chronic shortage of heavy machinery needed to clear the debris left by Israeli airstrikes. Crews are reportedly relying on rudimentary tools and exhausting manual labor. Specialized medics and civil defense teams are set to move to a new site in Gaza City to continue search operations.
An estimated 10,000 people remain unaccounted for and are believed to be buried under collapsed buildings across the Gaza Strip. Gaza's Health Ministry reports that more than 8,000 people are still missing under the rubble. Since a ceasefire took hold on October 11 last year, at least 1,254 people have been killed and 4,121 wounded, with 804 bodies recovered from rubble, according to the ministry's latest figures. The overall death toll since October 2023 has surpassed 73,300, with more than 174,000 wounded.