Photo: Anadolu Agency.
Gaza holds mass funeral for 100 unearthed from rubble, mostly children
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Gaza held a mass funeral for around 100 people whose remains were recently recovered from the rubble of destroyed homes in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, with the majority being children and women.
Palestinian journalists said the funeral included the bodies of 70 children.
Civil Defense teams had spent days carefully extracting the bodies and remains, including 55 from a single family home that was hit in an ‘Israeli’ airstrike on November 19, 2023, while sheltering more than 60 displaced people.
The recovery formed part of the second phase of Gaza Civil Defense’s “Recovery of Martyrs’ Bodies” project.
Tomorrow is a funeral to 100 Palestinians in Gaza, including 70 children.
— Muhammad Smiry 🇵🇸 (@MuhammadSmiry) September 5, 2026
Read this again. pic.twitter.com/uPgG1plNDG
Teams worked largely by hand and with very limited heavy machinery because of severe equipment shortages and ongoing restrictions.
Colonel Mohammed Abu Dan, overseeing the effort, said rescue crews spent a third consecutive day searching the site for more than 60 family members believed buried there.
“Most of the bodies have now been retrieved and will be buried together in a joint funeral procession,” he stated, while appealing for international help to supply excavators, bulldozers, and trucks so thousands more missing remains across Gaza can be recovered.
Reports indicated one broader operation in Zeitoun yielded roughly 100 remains.
Families and mourners gathered for the solemn procession, with remains prepared for burial amid scenes of grief that included young children present.
Candles, flowers, and Palestinian flags marked the farewell as relatives finally gained a measure of closure after nearly three years.
Abu Dan and other Civil Defense officials repeatedly highlighted the practical obstacles.
“The teams face major difficulties in the recovery operations due to a severe shortage of equipment and heavy machinery,” Abu Dan said, calling on humanitarian organizations to intervene urgently.
Spokesman Mahmoud Basal has similarly described operations relying on “very modest” resources—often a single excavator, bulldozer, and truck—supported in some cases by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The Zeitoun recoveries are part of a wider effort covering 147 destroyed homes across Gaza City and northern and central areas, where an estimated 1,072 bodies are still believed to lie under the rubble.
In an earlier phase, teams recovered hundreds of remains; overall, Civil Defense estimates that thousands—sometimes cited as more than 8,000 or approaching 10,000—remain missing beneath collapsed buildings.
The November 2023 strike on the family home killed dozens instantly, many of them women and children, with the death toll rising as more remains stayed trapped.
Similar mass recoveries and funerals earlier in 2026, such as one for 112 members of extended families in the Sabra neighborhood, underscored the same pattern of delayed burials caused by destruction and lack of tools.
