An Israeli drone circles above a sea of rubble in northern Gaza, where destroyed homes have become mass graves.
In Beit Lahia, rescue crews carried out one of their first missions to recover bodies buried deep beneath collapsed buildings at the site of one of the deadliest Israeli strikes of the war on Gaza.
The air strike destroyed a five storey residential building in late October 2024 and killed more than 132 members of the Abu Nasr family, according to an investigation by NPR.
Thirty year old survivor Ola Abu Nasr said:
“Every day we dreamed of the moment we could recover the martyrs, honour them, and bury them. Every day we felt as if they were calling to us: we are here.”
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, around 8,000 bodies are still trapped beneath rubble across the Strip.
NPR documented a three day recovery mission at the site of the Abu Nasr family massacre.
One Excavator for All of Gaza
Gaza’s Civil Defence selected the Beit Lahia site for its first major recovery operation in northern Gaza, one of the areas most devastated by Israeli bombardment.
Iyad Abu Jarad, the supervisor overseeing the operation, said his team receives between 10 and 15 calls every day from desperate families begging for help recovering the remains of their loved ones.
Yet according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Gaza currently has only one functioning excavator capable of carrying out body recovery operations.
Pat Griffiths, spokesperson for the Red Cross, said:
“The needs are absolutely enormous, and one working excavator is not enough.”
He added that a second excavator had recently been repaired and would enter service in the coming weeks.
Israel continues to block reconstruction efforts until Hamas is disarmed.
An Israeli security official, speaking anonymously, said:
“Such equipment is sensitive on more than one level, including the security level. I do not think much imagination is needed to understand that this equipment could be used for other purposes.”
Searching by the Smell of Death
The excavator lifts enormous slabs of concrete and twisted steel. Once the engine falls silent, the real task begins.
Twenty rescue workers kneel on the rubble. They are not searching with their eyes, but with their noses.
They lean toward cracks in the debris and smell the air, trying to locate decomposing bodies beneath the wreckage.
After 90 minutes, they recover the first body: sixty year old Shawqi Abu Nasr.
His family identifies him from his jacket. Almost nothing remains except clothing and bones.
Most victims have become skeletons still wrapped in the clothes they were wearing nearly a year and a half after their deaths.
There are no DNA tests available in Gaza. There are only the eyes of survivors.
Ola Abu Nasr said:
“It is like searching for a needle in a haystack. We wait for the moment they say they found someone. Our hearts tighten. Whose body could this be?”
By the end of the first day, the team had recovered only four bodies, while the orange excavator remained stationed above the rubble overnight.
“The Survivors Are the Dead”
On the second day, the excavator dug deeper into the collapsed building.
More victims were discovered frozen in the same positions they occupied during their final moments before the strike.
Rescue workers recovered the body of a mother lying on a mattress beneath a red blanket while holding an infant in her arms.
Another body was pulled from beneath the rubble.
Ola screamed that it was her sixteen year old brother Imad.
Weeping, she said:
“His hair is here, and his glasses. My God, this is my brother.”
She recognised him by his hair and by a broken pair of glasses still resting on his skull.
One of the few surviving family members, Ola has spent the last year and a half carefully documenting every victim from her family, from her seventy nine year old grandfather to a baby girl who was only six weeks old.
She spoke bitterly about the cruelty of survival after most of her family was killed.
“The dead are the survivors. Those who survived are the dead. Death is better than this pain. It is indescribable pain. They are at peace, and we are alive like the dead. We cry for the dead, and we cry for ourselves.”
By the end of the second day, workers had recovered 20 skeletons.
Some Bodies Remain Beneath the Rubble
On the third and final day of the mission, rescue crews recovered another 26 bodies.
In total, 50 bodies were found.
But the pain remains unresolved. Twenty family members are still trapped beneath the rubble in areas that are difficult to reach.
Fifty four year old Moeen Abu Nasr, Ola’s father, sat silently among the ruins. His brother’s body was not among those recovered.
He said quietly:
“I could not say goodbye to him. I could not help him. I feel helpless. My brother had a history, a name… and now the name is gone, and the body is gone. His entire family disappeared… his wife, his daughters, his sons. Only one daughter survived.”
The excavation reopened old wounds for a family that was almost entirely erased.
Twenty nine year old Aya Abu Nasr lost her uncles, aunts, and their children.
She said:
“Everyone I loved… nobody remains. I did not understand the meaning of genocide until my entire family was killed all at once, in a single moment, in the blink of an eye.”
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks during the war.
Israel rejects accusations of genocide and says its military campaign in Gaza was necessary to defeat Hamas following the 7 October 2023 attack that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel.
At the time the Abu Nasr family building was targeted, the Israeli military was conducting a weeks long offensive in Beit Lahia and had ordered civilians to leave the area.
The Israeli army said it had targeted an enemy observation point located on the roof of the building but provided no evidence.
Satellite imagery later showed that Israeli bombardment destroyed what remained of the neighbourhood in the weeks following the attack on the Abu Nasr family building.
New Graves
When the search operation ended, family members and rescue workers stood behind 50 body bags laid on the ground and performed funeral prayers before heading to the cemetery.
The survivors dug new graves and gently buried the bags of bones, light in weight yet carrying everything that remained of the people they loved.
Nearby, the excavator moved toward another collapsed building.
Another family was waiting for its turn to recover the skeletons of loved ones so the victims could finally rest in peace.
