Testimonies from the Crime Scene.. Gaza Civil Defense Men Recount the Horrors of Recovering Victims

The streets of the Gaza Strip, in the memory of civil defense crews, transform into an open record of pain and blood. Here, places are not just geographical coordinates, but rather scenes of massacres that have left indelible scars on their souls. Abdullah Al-Majdalawi, a rescue worker, recounts how their field missions turned into direct confrontations with death, as they rush towards the rubble with primitive tools to retrieve what remains of life or to preserve the dignity of scattered bodies.

On a dark night in September, the crews faced a harsh test when the home of the Masoud family in the Al-Daraj neighborhood was targeted. The voice of the girl, Malak Masoud, remained trapped under the rubble for long hours. Despite desperate rescue attempts and descending five meters under concrete blocks, the girl passed away, drowned in her own blood, leaving the crews with a heartbreaking decision: the necessity of amputating her leg to retrieve her body after two days of entrapment.

Tragedies in the Al-Daraj neighborhood did not stop there, but extended to include stories whose horror words fail to describe. Al-Majdalawi described the moments of operating the cutting machine and the scattering of bone fragments on his face. These pivotal moments reflected the extent of the cruelty imposed by the occupation on civilians, and turned rescuers into witnesses to atrocities that exceed the limits of human endurance.

In the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, 12 days after the military incursion, the crews succeeded in reaching the child Ahmed Naim, who was trapped under the rubble amidst intense artillery shelling. The child was extracted with a frail, skeletal body due to hunger and thirst, in a frantic race against time to save him before he was hit by occupation shells that were directly targeting the vicinity of the area.

As for Jabalia camp, Abdul Salam Al-Assi recalls the horrors of the 'Al-Trans massacre' that occurred in November 2023, where the smell of gunpowder mixed with the remains of victims in the streets. Al-Assi describes his shock when a grief-stricken man shouted at him, pushing him away from the body of his wife, whom the rescuer had unintentionally stepped on amidst the dense smoke and widespread chaos left by the airstrikes.

Scenes in Jabalia were not limited to rubble, but extended to include bodies burning inside targeted vehicles, where the skin of the martyrs would stick to the rescuers' hands when trying to retrieve them. Al-Assi says that the sensation of boiling flesh, like fire, remains etched in his tactile memory, images that embody the most horrific types of burning killings that Palestinians have been subjected to during the ongoing war of extermination.

In Beit Lahia project, the tragedy of the Dawawsa family was repeated, whose building was leveled to the ground over the heads of its residents, from under the rubble emerged the groans of a young man pleading not to be left alone. The young man's cries, 'I don't want to die, I am the only one alive from my family,' summarized the tragedy of genocide that erases entire families from the civil registry, leaving survivors to face endless psychological traumas.

The spokesperson for the Civil Defense, Mahmoud Bassal, was not immune to these tragedies, as he received the greatest shock with the martyrdom of his mother in a bombing that targeted their home in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood. Bassal recounts how he was on duty at Al-Ma'madani Hospital serving the wounded, only to be surprised by his mother's body arriving with a severed leg, leading him to bury her with his own hands in a moment where personal loss converged with a national duty heavy with tears.

The stories are numerous and similar in their cruelty, such as the story of the family found by Fadi Al-Salibi in Sheikh Zayed City, where he found a father, mother, and their four children in a final embrace under the rubble. The bodies had begun to decompose while still clinging together, forcing rescuers to separate them with difficulty, in a scene that documents the family's attempt to shelter each other from the terror of Israeli shelling and sniping.

In the Faluja neighborhood, ambulances and civil defense vehicles faced intense fire that prevented them from reaching the injured for three consecutive days, leading to the decomposition of bodies in the streets. When the crews were finally able to enter, body parts covered the entrances of homes, a clear indication of a policy of deliberate killing and preventing medical teams from performing their internationally guaranteed humanitarian duties.

These testimonies confirm that civil defense crews in Gaza operate under impossible conditions, lacking the most basic work requirements and heavy machinery needed to remove rubble. Nevertheless, these men continue to perform their duty, turning their bodies into bridges to save what can be saved, and documenting in their memory the details of crimes that will remain a testament to an era of brutal persecution against civilians.

The stories recounted by Al-Majdalawi, Al-Assi, Bassal, and Al-Salibi are not just fleeting memories, but living documents that condemn international silence regarding what is happening in the Gaza Strip. Every paragraph of these narratives carries a humanitarian cry demanding justice for the victims who perished under the rubble, and for the rescuers whose lives have become a series of funerals and impossible missions.

The memory of the Civil Defense in Gaza remains burdened with images of charred children and women who passed away while waiting for a glimmer of hope from above the rubble. These field narratives highlight the extent of the sacrifices made by the Palestinian cadre who face the war machine with bare chests and manual tools, trying to preserve what remains of human dignity in the midst of a comprehensive war of extermination.

Finally, these stories do not end with the cessation of shelling, but new chapters of pain begin with every body recovered and with every cry for help that goes unanswered due to the siege. These are stories written for history with ink of blood and pain, to remain a testament to the steadfastness of a people and to men who chose to remain in the field despite death surrounding them from all sides.

Flesh and bone fragments scattered on my face and hair, and in every moment I felt that the war was pushing me to an inhuman edge.