Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of human remains.
BEIT LAHIA, Gaza Strip — An Israeli drone buzzes above a sea of concrete and twisted metal where homes became mass graves. Here, Gaza’s Civil Defense carried out a three-day recovery mission to unearth bodies buried under rubble at the site of one of the war’s deadliest strikes.
In late October 2024 a five-story apartment building in Beit Lahia collapsed in an Israeli strike that an NPR investigation found killed more than 132 members of the extended Abu Naser family 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 about 8,000 bodies remain buried under debris across the territory. Yet the recovery effort here began with a single functioning excavator. Iyad Abu Jarad, who oversees the crew, says he gets 10 to 15 frantic calls a day from families pleading for help. The International Committee of the Red Cross confirms only one machine is available for body recoveries; a second was recently repaired and expected to join operations. Israeli authorities have restricted major rehabilitation machinery until Hamas is disarmed, citing security concerns.
The excavator lifts enormous slabs of concrete and rebar. When the engine stops, the human work begins. Twenty recovery workers drop to their knees and use their noses as much as their eyes, leaning into cracks and smelling the air to zero in on remains. After about 90 minutes at one spot they find the first: 60-year-old Shawqi Abu Naser, identified by his jacket. Mostly, the victims are skeletons inside their clothing — remains of people who died a year and a half earlier. With no DNA testing available in Gaza, identification relies on survivors’ memories and what small personal items remain.
By day’s end the team had recovered four bodies. On day two the excavator dug deeper. Rescue workers uncovered people exactly as they had been in their final moments: a mother on a mattress beneath a red blanket, clutching a baby; a young man later identified by his sister as her 16-year-old brother, Imad — recognized by his hair and a broken pair of glasses still resting on his skull. Ola, one of the few survivors from the extended family, had spent the previous 18 months documenting victims’ names and ages, 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. “We wait for the moment they say they found someone. Our hearts tighten: who could this body be?” She reflected on the pain of surviving while so many relatives perished: “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 recovered from the Abu Naser building, but around 20 family members remained missing, lodged too deep or in parts of the wreckage too dangerous to reach. Moeen Abu Naser, 54, sat quietly among the ruins, anguished that his brother was not among the 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 more than 73,000 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks during the war. Israel denies 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, Israel said its forces were engaged in a weeks-long offensive in Beit Lahia and had ordered civilians to flee; it told reporters it was targeting an “enemy spotter” on the building’s roof but did not provide visual evidence. Satellite imagery shows subsequent Israeli bombing further devastated the neighborhood in the weeks after the attack.
When recovery at the site finished, family members and rescue workers recited prayers behind 50 white body bags laid out on the ground. Survivors then carried the bags to a cemetery. They dug new graves and gently lowered in bags that weighed almost nothing but meant everything — bundles of bones finally given a place to rest. The excavator moved afterward to the collapsed house next door, where another family waited for their chance to recover loved ones.
NPR documented this recovery mission at the Abu Naser site. Daniel Estrin contributed reporting from Tel Aviv. Anas Baba/NPR provided photographs from the scene.