The destruction of key heavy machinery on Tuesday
following reported Israeli airstrikes has brought rescue and
recovery efforts to a standstill, making it even harder to
reach the estimated 11,000 bodies still trapped under the
debris.
According to local authorities, the strikes
put a halt to all solid waste and debris removal operations,
UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told journalists at a
briefing in New York.
Until recently, bulldozers and
other excavation equipment had been used in painstaking
efforts to recover bodies from the wreckage.
One
bulldozer operated by Atif Nasr – who before the war
worked building and repairing roads – had become vital in
the grim task of extracting the remains of loved ones from
the rubble.
He was interviewed by a UN News
correspondent in Gaza before the strike but now his grim but
vital work has come to a standstill after his vehicle was
destroyed.
Months trapped in rubble
The
Dahdouh family managed to recover the remains of their son,
Omar, from the ruins of their home, almost a year after he
was killed in an airstrike which levelled their seven-story
building.
Standing at the site, Omar’s brother,
Moayad, shared the family’s ordeal.
“His body
remained trapped under the rubble for nearly a year. After
the war, we tried to retrieve him, but with the building so
large and with no heavy machinery available, it was
impossible.
“We searched everywhere for
a bulldozer to reach the ground floor – where Omar had
been – but during the war, Israeli forces destroyed or
burned all the bulldozers or excavators that could have
helped us.”
A decent burial
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In
southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, the Dajani family continues
to live in what’s left of their destroyed home, where the
bodies of three of their children remain buried.
Their
father Ali remembers the time they died with a heavy
heart.
“We fled to the beach area during the
bombings. When we returned, the house was gone – and our
children were still under the debris. We are forced to live
here, but this is not life. It is unbearable,” he told our
correspondent.
“We have no clean water, no food. We
are lost. All we ask is to recover our children’s bodies.
To bury the dead is sacred. That is all we
want.”
Just days ago, Mr. Dajani spoke as diggers
worked nearby to clear away the debris. That effort, too,
has come to a halt for now.
A mounting humanitarian
crisis
The UN estimates that approximately 92 per
cent of all residential buildings in Gaza – around 436,000
homes – have been damaged or destroyed since the start of
the conflict.
The resulting debris amounts to nearly
50 million tonnes – an overwhelming quantity of rubble
that would take decades to remove under current
conditions.
Humanitarian organisations warn that the
delay in debris removal and body recovery is not only
deepening psychological trauma across Gaza but also
threatens to become a public health and environmental
catastrophe.
