Gaza holds funeral for 112 recovered victims of 2023 Israeli massacre

Palestinians gathered on Tuesday for a mass funeral of more than 100 bodies finally recovered from a deadly Israeli strike in Gaza in 2023.

More than 300 people were killed on Nov. 22, 2023, weeks into the genocidal war on the enclave, when warplanes flattened a residential block in Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood.

Around 40 bodies were recovered soon afterward in a frantic scramble of rough tools and bare hands, but most were buried deep beneath the rubble.

The strike happened just before the first ceasefire, and reports of the high number of victims took days to reach the public in the chaos of the war.

Over the weekend, first responders dug through the destroyed buildings and recovered remains of 112 victims, including 40 children, according to the Civil Defense, a rescue agency operating under the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.

It said 157 bodies still have not been found.

“The only crime of these martyrs was that they remained steadfast and resilient in their homes, believing that these homes would protect them,” one relative, Taysir al-Hassayna, told The Associated Press following the funeral prayers.

For the missing, it's "as if their bodies had evaporated without a trace".

The current ceasefire has allowed recovery of remains

Only now are some bodies of people killed in the war's ferocious early months slowly being recovered, as a fragile ceasefire that took effect in October allows such efforts to push ahead in parts of devastated Gaza.

At least 7,400 people have been reported by relatives to still be under the rubble, Zaher al-Waheidi, head of the ministry's records department, told the AP. The true number is likely thousands higher because in some cases entire families were killed in a single bombing, leaving no one to report the missing, al-Waheidi has said.

The people mourned on Tuesday were from a residential block belonging to the Hassayna and Abu Sharia clan, and many were related. The Associated Press has identified at least 60 families across Gaza who lost 25 or more family members during the first three months of war.

On Tuesday, the remains of the victims, wrapped in Palestinian flags, were laid in rows on the ground. Many were marked with photos, and flower petals were scattered around all. Hundreds of people surrounded the bodies for funeral prayers, some standing on the rubble.

Following the prayers, people carried the bodies on stretchers along a narrow street lined by destroyed buildings and buried them in a nearby cemetery.

Gaza is struggling to rebuild amid ceasefire violations

Israel has violated the ceasefire from the moment it came into effect, with at least 1,252 Palestinians killed in Gaza since it took effect, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.

Gaza remains shattered. Most of its 2 million Palestinians are displaced, many living in tent camps where poor conditions and overcrowding have led to rodent infestations and outbreaks of infectious diseases such as chickenpox.

The Board of Peace official overseeing Gaza’s postwar transition, Nikolay Mladenov, on Monday met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in part to discuss a new disarmament deal the U.S.-created board has reached with Hamas.

Last week, President Donald Trump announced an agreement that calls for Israel to cease its military operations in Gaza and for Hamas and its allies there to halt all militant activity. After the text of the agreement was released, Israel said it had “serious security concerns".