Rescue of the bodies of 25 Palestinians, including a journalist and her mother, from under the rubble of a house in Khan Yunis

The Gaza Civil Defense announced on Thursday the rescue of the bodies of 25 Palestinians, including the journalist Hiba Al-Abadla and her mother, from under the rubble of a house in the city of Khan Yunis in the south of the sector, stating that they were killed during the Israeli genocide war.

In a brief statement, it said that the Civil Defense crews in Khan Yunis "managed, in cooperation with forensic evidence crews, to rescue the bodies of 25 martyrs from under the rubble of the Al-Ushtal family house in the western Satar area, including the remains of journalist Hiba Al-Abadla and her mother (all killed in January 2024)".

On Thursday morning, the Civil Defense announced the start of excavation work to rescue the bodies of the missing from under the rubble of the destroyed house since about two years ago, in Khan Yunis.

The Civil Defense is conducting organized operations to search for the bodies of Palestinians missing under the rubble of homes and small buildings destroyed by Israel during the two years of genocide in the Gaza Strip.

The search operations are carried out with the support of the International Committee of the Red Cross, with the participation of the Arab Reconstruction Commission for Gaza, the Emergency Committee and Rapid Response Administration, forensic evidence and forensic medicine in Gaza City, the Ministries of Health and Endowments, the families of the missing killed, in addition to the Tribal and Clan Gathering, according to the Civil Defense.

According to the Civil Defense, its crews work using simple and rudimentary machinery, in addition to some dilapidated heavy equipment "due to the occupation's prevention of importing modern machinery to remove rubble".

Since the ceasefire agreement entered into force in the Gaza Strip on October 10 last year, the search for bodies has been conducted in an unorganized manner, often by civilians, due to the lack of necessary equipment for the Civil Defense to remove rubble.

Israel refuses to allow the entry of heavy machinery and equipment to lift tons of rubble, which hinders the operations of rescuing the bodies of Palestinians buried underneath.

According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, Israel has committed violations related to the humanitarian protocol of the ceasefire agreement, including preventing the entry of "hundreds of heavy machinery" needed to rescue bodies from under the rubble.

Over the past two months, Israel has allowed the entry of limited heavy equipment and machinery to search for the bodies of its prisoners in the sector, while continuing to prevent the entry of similar machinery to search for the bodies of Palestinians.

The identification of bodies is carried out by Palestinian families who lost their loved ones since the start of the genocide war, through remaining distinctive marks on the bodies or the clothes they were wearing before their disappearance, amid the absence of specialized medical devices.

The genocide launched by Israel on October 8, 2023, and lasted two years, left more than 71,000 Palestinian dead, and more than 171,000 injured, in addition to massive destruction affecting nearly 90% of the civilian infrastructure, resulting in the accumulation of nearly 70 million tons of rubble in the Gaza Strip.