His funeral was meant to pass through the streets of the devastated city, the same city where his voice once echoed through its nights as solace for its people during the darkest hours of war. Gazans had hoped to carry his coffin on their shoulders, or to escort him to a simple grave that would become a place of visitation, marked by a headstone reading:
“Here lies the spokesperson of the resistance, Abu Ubaida.”
But none of that happened.
Six bombs struck the location where the masked spokesman was present with his family. Nothing of his body remained. “The masked man’s body completely vanished,” special military sources told Al Jazeera Net.
Abu Ubaida was not the first case specialists described as bodily disappearance. According to estimates from Gaza’s Civil Defence, shared with Al Jazeera Net, the bodies of more than 3,000 Gazans have gone missing.
Mahmoud Basal, a Civil Defence worker who personally witnessed the phenomenon, recalled an attack on their headquarters in the Al Tuffah neighbourhood in December 2023. Speaking to Al Jazeera Net, he said: “We were eight people. Two missiles struck us directly. Everyone was martyred. I survived. But two of our colleagues left no trace except for fragments of their scalps.”
He added: “The missile vaporised them instantly when it hit them directly.”
From Presence to Absence
Paramedics operating in the field confirmed to Al Jazeera Net that certain types of bombs and missiles reduce human bodies to ash. Basal said: “Survivors tell us a specific number of people were inside an apartment. When we begin recovery, we find some of them, while the rest leave no trace.”
Al Jazeera Net witnessed one such recovery operation conducted by Civil Defence and Red Cross teams searching for martyrs beneath the rubble in Gaza Governorate. At the Khadra family home in Sheikh Radwan, northern Gaza, the mission was to recover five missing individuals believed to be under the debris. After a full day of searching, only one body was found. The other four left not even a single bone, as teams informed family members who had precisely identified where their relatives had been before the strike.
An Al Jazeera Net correspondent spoke to “M.D.”, a forensic officer at the site, who confirmed this was not the first time martyrs’ bodies had disappeared. He said: “Months ago in Al Shati refugee camp, 17 people were martyred in one apartment, and not a single body was recovered. In another house belonging to the Awad family in Sheikh Radwan, 12 martyrs were found out of 45. The rest vanished without any trace.”
At recovery sites, families wait in silence, hoping for any fragment. Faces are weighed down with grief, eyes fixed on excavators turning over rubble in search of a skull, a piece of clothing, any remnant linking them to their loved ones. They have barely begun to accept their loss. Yet the shock of having no remains to honour is a second trauma. The occupation did not only end their lives, but dissolved their bodies after death.
New Bombs and Overwhelming Force
One question hangs over these sites: where did our children’s bodies go? How did they disappear?
Seeking answers, Al Jazeera Net posed this question to an explosives engineer who has examined strike locations since the early weeks of the war where entire bodies were reported missing.
The expert, who requested anonymity, stated that what families encounter at these sites is not a mystery but the direct result of specific munitions with immense thermal and pressure effects.
He explained that Israel used American made munitions in Gaza, including MK 84 and BLU 109 bunker busters, in addition to precision guided bombs such as GBU 31, GBU 32, GBU 38 and GBU 39. These weapons were designed to destroy fortified military positions, tunnels and large concrete structures, not residential homes inhabited by civilians.
According to the explosives expert, killing an unarmed person requires no more than half a kilogram of explosive material. However, the bombs used in these strikes carry massive payloads that can reach 250 kilograms or more.
He said: “When such a bomb strikes a residential apartment or small home, the mixture of explosives such as Tritonal and PBX, combined with oxidised aluminium powder, generates extreme heat and pressure reaching 3,000 degrees Celsius and possibly exceeding 5,000. Within a fraction of a second, a body within the primary blast radius is reduced to ash or microscopic fragments. Those a few metres away suffer severe fragmentation, making recovery of their remains nearly impossible.”
What is described as disappearance is, therefore, a direct consequence of these munitions, which effectively turn the human body into dust.
An Unprecedented Crime
“It is a dangerous precedent in the history of contemporary armed conflicts,” the Government Media Office told Al Jazeera Net regarding cases of bodily disappearance.
The office stated that the use of such highly explosive munitions in densely populated civilian areas amounts to a war crime and places the international community before a test of its legal and moral credibility.
Its director, Ismail Al Thawabta, said that this pattern of mass killing constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law, particularly the principles of distinction and proportionality, and the prohibition against excessive force. He described it as further evidence of genocide against protected civilians, calling for a comprehensive review of international legal mechanisms and stronger measures of accountability and deterrence.
Al Thawabta demanded the formation of independent international investigative committees to document the crimes and classify them scientifically and legally, and to activate international accountability tools without double standards or selectivity.
