Crouched over the rubble of what was once his home in Gaza City’s Sabra neighbourhood, Mahmoud Hammad carefully sifts dirt through a large sieve, searching for traces of the family he lost more than two years ago, said an AP report.
In recent days, his painstaking effort yielded tiny bone fragments. Hammad believes they belong to the unborn daughter his wife was carrying when an Israeli airstrike struck their six-storey building on Dec. 6, 2023, killing his pregnant wife and their five children.
“I won’t find them all,” Hammad said quietly, as he added the fragments to a box of remains he has collected over months of digging through the wreckage, using picks, shovels and his bare hands.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, about 8,000 people remain buried beneath rubble from Israel’s military campaign against Hamas. While intense bombardment and ground operations made recovery efforts nearly impossible during the fighting, a ceasefire reached in October has allowed limited search operations to resume, though they remain hampered by a lack of heavy equipment.
The Airstrike that Devastated Hammad’s life
The Israeli strike that devastated Hammad’s life came around 11:30 a.m. as his wife, Nema Hammad, who was nine months pregnant, and their five children – aged between 8 and 16 – were finishing breakfast. Hammad, 39, had briefly stepped out of the apartment moments before the explosion.
In the days prior, the Israeli military had dropped leaflets urging residents to evacuate to southern Gaza. Hammad chose to remain. His wife and children temporarily relocated to her parents’ home in Jabaliya but returned a day before the strike.
“Either we live together or we are martyred together,” Hammad recalled his wife telling him.
The blast killed not only his immediate family but also his brother, sister-in-law and their four sons, who lived in the same building. Hammad survived with multiple injuries, including fractures to his chest, pelvis and knee, and internal bleeding.
Neighbours were able to retrieve the body of his eldest son, Ismail, along with two of his brother’s children. The rest of the family remained buried beneath the debris.
A Lone Search Through the Rubble
After recovering from his injuries, Hammad returned to the ruins and erected a makeshift shelter nearby.
“I stayed with them, my wife and children, in the rubble,” he said. “Every day, I am talking to them.”
Initial requests for help from Gaza’s Civil Defence went unanswered, either due to ongoing hostilities or a lack of machinery. Hammad began excavating the site himself, breaking apart collapsed ceilings and walls into smaller stones and filling dozens of sacks that now line the area.
In March 2024, he uncovered partial remains believed to belong to family members. Later that year, he reached what had been his brother’s third-floor apartment and found the bodies of his brother and sister-in-law. They were buried in a temporary graveyard established during the war.
Since the ceasefire in October, Hammad has resumed digging, descending nearly nine meters to reach what had been his ground-floor apartment. Focusing on the eastern side of the home, where his wife had been sitting, he recently discovered tiny bone fragments, including what appears to be a small jawbone. A doctor consulted via WhatsApp indicated the fragments were likely from a baby.
Hammad believes they belong to the daughter they had planned to name Haifa. A crib, baby clothes and a prepared room had awaited her arrival.
“There’s a clue that I’m reaching my wife and other children,” he said. He hopes to gather enough remains to give them a proper burial.
Widespread Devastation
Since the October ceasefire, more than 700 bodies have been recovered from beneath destroyed buildings, according to Zaher Al-Waheidi, head of the Health Ministry’s records department. The ministry reports more than 72,000 people have been killed in the war, which began after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel that left around 1,200 people dead and 251 taken hostage.
UN satellite imagery analysis indicates that 81 per cent of Gaza’s 250,000 buildings have been damaged or destroyed. The territory is now strewn with an estimated 61 million tons of rubble – comparable in volume to 15 Great Pyramids of Giza or 25 Eiffel Towers.
Recovery efforts face severe obstacles. Israel restricts the entry of bulldozers and heavy machinery into Gaza, and more than half of the territory remains under Israeli military control, where further demolitions continue.
Civil Defence teams recently received a single excavator through coordination by the United Nations and the Red Cross, but officials say it is far from sufficient.
In Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, rescue crews have resumed work at the site of another building flattened in December 2023 while sheltering about 120 people. Sixty-six bodies were recovered shortly after the strike, and 27 more were recently found. Dozens remain missing.
Among them are the wife and four children of Rafiq Abdel-Khaleq Salem, who said he continues to wait for closure. “It is a painful feeling,” Salem said. “I hoped to find my wife and children to bury them in graves and visit them.”
