Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of human remains.
BEIT LAHIA, Gaza Strip — Under a sky punctuated by the sound of an Israeli drone, a landscape of shattered concrete and twisted metal marks where homes became graves. Over three days, Gaza Civil Defense crews excavated a collapsed five-story apartment building in Beit Lahia, painstakingly recovering bodies buried since one of the war’s deadliest strikes.
The building fell in late October 2024 in an Israeli strike that an NPR investigation found killed more than 132 members of the extended Abu Naser family who had been sheltering there. “We’ve been dreaming every day of the moment we could recover the martyrs, honor them, and bury them,” said 30-year-old survivor Ola Abu Naser. “Every day we felt as if they were calling us, saying: ‘We are here.'”
Gaza health officials estimate roughly 8,000 bodies still lie under debris across the territory. The recovery effort at the Abu Naser site began with a single working excavator. Iyad Abu Jarad, who leads the crew, said he fields 10 to 15 desperate calls daily from families asking for help. The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed there was only one machine available for body recoveries; a second had recently been repaired and was expected to join operations. Israeli authorities say they have restricted the use of large rehabilitation machinery until Hamas is disarmed, citing security concerns.
The excavator lifted massive slabs of concrete and rebar. When the engine fell silent, human hands took over. Two dozen recovery workers dropped to their knees and searched gaps with their eyes, hands and even their noses, leaning into cracks and sniffing the air to pinpoint remains. After about 90 minutes at one spot they found the first body: 60-year-old Shawqi Abu Naser, identified by his jacket. Most of the victims were skeletons, their clothing the only remaining clue. With no DNA testing available in Gaza, identification depended on survivors’ memories and the small personal items that survived the collapse.
On the first day the team recovered four bodies. On the second day the excavator reached deeper. Workers found people as they had been at the moment of death: a mother on a mattress under a red blanket, clutching a baby; a young man later identified by his sister as 16-year-old Imad — recognized by his hair and a broken pair of glasses still resting on his skull. Ola, one of the few from the extended family who survived, had spent the prior 18 months recording the names and ages of relatives, from a 79-year-old grandfather to a six-week-old infant.
“It’s like you’re searching for a needle in a haystack,” Ola said. She spoke about the haunting burden of survival: “The ones who died are the survivors. The ones who survived are the dead… Better to be dead than to be in pain, a pain beyond description. They’re at rest. We’re like the walking dead.”
By the end of the second day crews had recovered 20 more skeletons; on the third day they found 26 additional bodies. In total, 50 bodies were removed from the Abu Naser building, though about 20 relatives remained missing, trapped too deep or in parts of the wreckage too dangerous to reach. Moeen Abu Naser, 54, sat among the ruins, tormented that his brother was not among those recovered. “I couldn’t say goodbye, I couldn’t help, and I feel helpless,” he said. “My brother has a history, a name… now the name is gone, the body is gone.”
Gaza’s health ministry reports that more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks during the war. Israel rejects accusations of genocide and says its campaign was necessary to defeat Hamas after the militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel. At the time of the strike on the Abu Naser apartment, Israeli officials said their forces were conducting a weeks-long operation in Beit Lahia and had ordered civilians to evacuate; they told reporters they were targeting an “enemy spotter” on the building’s roof but did not provide visual evidence. Satellite imagery shows subsequent Israeli strikes further devastated the neighborhood in the weeks after the initial attack.
When recovery at the site concluded, family members and rescuers gathered to recite prayers behind 50 white body bags laid out on the ground. Survivors carried the bags to a cemetery, dug graves and gently lowered in the remains — fragile bundles of bones that nonetheless meant everything to those left behind. The excavator then moved to the collapsed house next door, where another family waited for their chance to recover loved ones.
NPR documented the recovery mission at the Abu Naser site. Daniel Estrin contributed reporting from Tel Aviv. Anas Baba/NPR provided photographs from the scene.