Missing since the war: Gaza reburies the remains of 40 Palestinians
The remains of 40 Palestinians were buried
Written by: Ayman Ragab
On Tuesday, Palestinian civil defense crews retrieved the remains of 40 Palestinians from the Sheikh Radwan cemetery north of Gaza City, before reburying them after the graves were subjected to excavation and bulldozing operations carried out by Israeli forces during the war.
The General Directorate of Civil Defense in Gaza said in a statement that its crews “successfully transferred the remains of 40 Palestinians from the eastern side of the Sheikh Radwan cemetery,” noting that the area had been subjected to Israeli bulldozing operations during the war.
She added that the retrieval process was carried out with the participation of forensic evidence and medical examiners and the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs, as part of efforts to preserve the dignity of the dead and document the bodies whose burial sites were destroyed.
Exhuming graves during Israeli bulldozing operations
According to field information, a number of bodies whose graves were dug up during the Israeli bulldozing operations had been temporarily and randomly buried by the locals during the war, before being reburied today in organized places inside the cemetery.
The directorate explained that the remains were handed over to the competent authorities to complete the legal and humanitarian procedures related to identifying their owners and preserving the bodies in accordance with the approved procedures.
The specialized teams were able to identify a number of bodies and rebury them with their names inside the same cemetery, while other bodies could not be identified due to decomposition or loss of distinctive features.
Sources in the directorate told Anadolu Agency that the unidentified bodies were kept inside special bags and documented with identification numbers before being reburied, allowing for the possibility of identifying them in the future if new information or evidence becomes available.
The Sheikh Radwan cemetery is one of the largest cemeteries in Gaza City, and during the Israeli war it was subjected to repeated bulldozing and targeting operations that resulted in the desecration of graves and the destruction of large parts of it.
The exhumation of the remains comes amid repeated accusations that Israel bulldozed and targeted cemeteries in the Gaza Strip during the war.
In January 2024, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said it had documented Israeli army attacks on at least 12 cemeteries in the Gaza Strip by bulldozing them.
Damage to at least 16 cemeteries
A CNN investigation also revealed that the Israeli army damaged at least 16 cemeteries in the Gaza Strip during its ground operations, including destroying gravestones, bulldozing burial grounds, and in some cases exhuming bodies from their burial sites.
Since the ceasefire agreement came into effect on October 10, 2025, civil defense teams and specialized teams have continued to transfer bodies from random and temporary graves to regular cemeteries after they have been identified by their relatives.
Given the limited resources, the authorities in Gaza rely on the families of the missing to identify bodies through clothing, body features, or signs of injuries, in a process that leaves harsh psychological effects on the victims' relatives.
The Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, which began on October 8, 2023, left more than 73,000 martyrs and 173,000 wounded, in addition to widespread destruction affecting about 90 percent of the civilian infrastructure, according to Palestinian and UN data.
