GAZA CITY — Yusef al-Zaharnah’s eyes were transfixed on the excavator’s bucket as its claws scooped into the rubble, hoping its fresh load would end nine grueling months of uncertainty and allow him to fully grieve.
Once it disgorged its haul, Al-Zaharnah, a burly, weary-looking 56-year-old, climbed over the detritus and bent low for a closer look. But his search yielded only crushed masonry; no bones, and no sign of his son, or the others killed with him.
“If I see even a small piece, whether it belongs to my son or to someone else’s, at least they can finally be buried,” Al-Zaharnah said, trudging back to his spot by the excavator to await the next load and resume his search.
Al-Zaharnah’s journey of mourning began in October when an Israeli missile leveled the five-story building in Gaza City where his family was sheltering with others during Israel’s war against Hamas militants.
More than 40 people were killed in the airstrike, including three of his sons: Munther, 31; Mutaz, 26; and 21-year-old Abdul Karim.
He had managed to pull out the bodies of Munther and Abdul Karim in the first days after the airstrike and buried them beside another son, Munir, 28, who died in an Israeli strike in June 2025.
All I want is to bury my son beside his brothers
— Yusef Al-Zaharnah
But Mutaz remained missing, his body impossible to reach without heavy machinery that only recently became available.
“All I want is to bury my son beside his brothers,” Al-Zaharnah said, his voice quiet as he stared at the excavator.
For Gaza’s Civil Defense forces, Al-Zaharnah’s family represents a small part of a much larger crisis. Authorities estimate that more than 8,500 bodies — other experts suggest the figure is closer to 14,000 — remain trapped under 61.5 million tons of rubble across the Palestinian enclave, roughly 20 times the amount produced by conflicts around the world since 2008.
Recovering them from one of the most devastated places on Earth — the United Nations says more than 80% of buildings are damaged or destroyed — with the meager resources on hand has been a frustratingly gargantuan task, said Mahmoud al-Basal, a spokesman for the Civil Defense.
“Every day, the Civil Defense receives dozens of calls from families asking whether we can search beneath the ruins of their homes for loved ones,” Al-Basal said.
“For families, the missing are not gone, they are still beneath the rubble, waiting to be found. It’s one of the conflict’s least visible, yet most devastating humanitarian emergencies,” he said.
The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in southern Israel — two thirds of whom were civilians, Israeli authorities say — and took 251 others hostage.
Israel retaliated with a massive military offensive that has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, Gaza’s Health Ministry says, around half of them women and children. (The ministry is part of the Hamas-led authority in the Gaza Strip, but its count — which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters — is considered accurate by the U.N., medical experts and the Israeli military.)
The U.N., humanitarian experts and human rights organizations, including Israeli groups, accuse Israel of committing genocide in its campaign in Gaza — a charge Israel denies, saying its attacks aimed to destroy Hamas.
During the war, as the death toll ticked upward in the enclave, search operations for bodies largely stopped, either because most heavy equipment was destroyed, fuel became scarce or many strike sites became inaccessible due to the fighting.
Even after a ceasefire took effect Oct. 10, 2025, it was hard to resume searches, because more than 80% of the Civil Defense’s equipment was destroyed.
And although the first phase of the Trump-brokered ceasefire stipulated unfettered entry for rubble-removing equipment, Israel has heavily restricted entry of excavators, bulldozers and cranes. (Last year, a Hamas official said Israel had allowed in only six of the 500 excavators and other heavy machinery needed.)
That forced rescue crews to rely on a few privately owned excavators that frequently broke down for lack of spare parts and fuel, which Israel also restricts.
Israel says major rehabilitation efforts won’t begin until Hamas is disarmed, and says construction equipment is dual-use and can serve military purposes.
Meanwhile, Israeli attacks, though lessened, have not fully abated, with near-daily strikes killing at least 1,072 people since the ceasefire took effect. Israel says it’s targeting Hamas and other militants to stop any threat.
In late June, support from the International Committee of the Red Cross enabled the Civil Defense to resume recovery efforts for a limited number of hours in approved areas, after coordinating with the Israeli military. The result was a single, wholly outmatched excavator coming to the mountain of masonry that had been the Al-Zaharnah home, where Mutaz and at least six others were still interred.
The attack that killed him came on the evening of Oct. 9, the day before the ceasefire took hold.
“We were all waiting,” Al-Zaharnah recalled. “Nobody wanted to move if the ceasefire was only hours away.”
As the sounds of fighting increased nearby, Al-Zaharnah decided to leave with his wife and youngest son. His older children and their families stayed behind.
“There was no evacuation order,” Al-Zaharnah said. “No warning. In any case, there was nowhere safe for them to go.”
When the missile came, the explosion pulverized the building so completely that many victims could not immediately be identified. Rescuers used what tools they could scrounge — shovels, hoes, pickaxes, their bare hands. The force of the blast had scattered human remains across a wide area.
“In the first days we weren’t collecting bodies; we were collecting pieces,” Al-Zaharnah said. Eventually, they used stray dogs, hoping they could detect the scent of flesh.
After that, when the impossibility of recovering anyone else became clear, Al-Zaharnah and others kept hoping international organizations would convince Israel to allow more construction equipment, but to little avail.
On the day Al-Zaharnah monitored the excavation, the crews were working at a painfully slow pace, peeling back the pancaked layers of the building one by one.
“This is the third day we’ve done this,” Al-Zaharnah said, standing beside the excavator.
“Maybe we’ll need another.”
The amount of time that passed has only compounded the challenges of finding — let alone identifying — the victims. What remains that haven’t been scavenged have decomposed to the point where DNA analysis is difficult and all but useless in Gaza, where there are no functioning laboratories able to test and compare samples.
Clothing or accessories that could be used to identify loved ones may have been burned or torn off. And methods to recover the bodies are crude enough to destroy the very thing they seek — a thought that has stalked Al-Zaharnah’s mind again and again.
“I keep wondering, if they find Mutaz now, will the excavator tear apart what remains of his body?” he said. His only greater fear, he added, was not finding his son at all.
Gaza officials say they have recovered 784 bodies since the truce began, according to a June report by the Palestinian news agency Wafa. In October, authorities established a cemetery in the city of Deir al Balah to bury unidentified bodies recovered from around the enclave. The details of the bodies are documented and the graves numbered so that family members can return and reclaim them.
Mutaz’s remains have yet to be recovered.
Special correspondent Shbeir reported from Gaza City and Times staff writer Bulos from Beirut.
