Deir el-Balah – Dozens of our bodies, wrapped in improvised white cloths that double as shrouds, lie collectively in a newly dug mass grave.
They’re the unidentified Palestinians who had been killed in Israeli assaults, their our bodies are both charred past recognition or torn aside, to the purpose the place the burial supervisors are generally not fully certain in the event that they obtained the entire particular person.
However the crew at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital does its finest to supply the right Islamic burial rituals to the stays, hoping that their efforts will permit the deceased victims to relaxation.
Yasser Abu Ammar, who supervises the ritual washing of the useless on the hospital, instructed Al Jazeera: “About 80 p.c of the our bodies we obtain are torn aside. We’re burying torn-apart limbs, and a few our bodies have their organs lacerated and uncovered.
“We’ve by no means seen something like this, like these puzzling wounds inflicted on these mangled physique components.”
Abu Ammar added that he had supervised the burial of physique components belonging to a six-member household in a single shroud.
“All of them barely made up one full physique,” he stated.
Mohammed al-Hajj, hospital spokesperson, stated about 150 unknown our bodies have been buried to this point, documented by a committee of police and well being officers.
The our bodies are numbered and photographed for the report.
“We additionally embrace details about the Israeli bombing that hit them, the date and place of the assault and the timing,” al-Hajj stated. “We additionally report the names of the wounded and recognized deceased individuals who arrived on the hospital on the identical time.”
“It’s very onerous to establish these our bodies,” Abu Ammar stated. “Members of the family resort to scrutinising physique components to catch a scar or a mole and even the burned stays of garments that may assist them establish their family members, however most of them can’t.”
In all his years of washing and burying our bodies, he stated, the primary time he encountered unknown our bodies was throughout this, the present Israeli offensive on Gaza.
“After I’m at dwelling, my mind performs the tape of every part I noticed that day … intimately. I can’t cease it. I’ve had probably the most horrible nightmares about these our bodies.”
“That is probably the most harrowing factor I’ve ever been by.”
Pictures are useful if relations come to the hospital inquiring about their family members, however Abu Ammar says that generally, the victims’ skulls are shattered and their faces burned past recognition.
“These our bodies had been human beings … had dignity,” he stated. “To see their our bodies diminished to burned stays or chopped items is insufferable.”