(23 Jan 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rafah, Gaza Strip – 22 January 2025
1. Various of health workers and civil defence searching for remains of discovered body
2. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Majdi Mughaiar, health worker:
++PART OVERLAID BY SHOTS 1, 3, 4++
"We found the remains of three missing persons who were recovered and collected in a body bag. They were completely decomposed skeletons, some parts were missing, and the bodies were pieces of bone in different places due to stray dogs."
3. Various of civil defence carrying bag containing bones and body remains and placing it in ambulance
4. Various of women sitting near the destruction waiting to find the body of their relative
5. Various of health worker next to remains inside bag
6. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Samira Al-Shaar, mother of missing person:
++PART OVERLAID BY SHOTS 4, 5 & 7++
"Thank God, we found him nine months later, when they announced the truce. We returned to our son, whom we had left and could not protect. He was bombed and we could not reach him. We left him to save our lives, and since the truce began, we have been searching for him."
7. Various of search
STORYLINE:
In the first few days of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal, Palestinian families and civil defence workers in the Gaza Strip have set about the grim task of recovering the remains of thousands of missing people.
Some bodies lie out in the open, in places too dangerous to be reached during the war.
Others have disappeared into the Israeli detention system. But most, officials say, remain trapped under mounds of rubble – inaccessible due to the constant strikes and crossfire or the distances separating displaced family members.
Countless families in Gaza have been waiting months for the chance to return to their destroyed homes and search for their missing loved ones.
With the ceasefire that took effect this week, they finally got one.
The moment that the skies over Gaza fell silent for the first time in almost 14 months on Sunday, Abdullah Qeshta and his mother, Samira Alshaar, rushed from their makeshift shelter in the southern city of Khan Younis to the home they fled in the border town of Rafah nine months ago.
Last April, Qeshta said, as he and his family were about to abandon their house and all of their belongings for fear of Israeli bombardment, his brother, Ibrahim, ran back inside quickly to grab blankets.
At that moment, an airstrike hit, and their building crashed down, trapping Ibrahim beneath the ruins. They would have gone in to find him, Abdullah said, but it was too dangerous.
From the first day of the ceasefire, the Qeshta family and a group of professional civil defence workers have, each day, clambered over the dusty wreckage of their home to dig, breaking only to pray and sleep.
On Wednesday, finally, they glimpsed the shreds of Ibrahim’s pyjamas, then his hat, then his hair.
Ibrahim’s mother, Alshaar, was struggling to hold back tears.
“From the moment of the truce, we started searching and searching,” she said. “Thank God, thank God.”
It’s grisly work for the civil defence workers who sort through Gaza’s rubble heaps. Sometimes, all that they find are bones.
On Wednesday, forensic worker Majdi Mughaiar said his team found the remains of three missing people.
“They were completely decomposed skeletons … the bodies were just pieces of bone scattered in different places because of stray dogs,” he said.
AP video by Wafaa Shurafa
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