GAZA — At least 8,000 bodies remain buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings across the Gaza Strip, and recovering them all could take about eight years with the resources currently available, Gaza Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said, in remarks reported by ABNA on Wednesday and first given to Anadolu Agency. "According to available information, at least 8,000 bodies remain under the rubble, but the real number is higher than this figure, because more bodies are being discovered every day," Basal said. He added that some bodies had been completely destroyed by the intensity of the attacks, leaving no trace.

Source: ABNA English

The warning came days after Gaza buried 75 Palestinians whose remains were recovered from destroyed homes in the latest phase of the search operation. The first phase, launched in November 2025, recovered 333 bodies and remains from 54 destroyed homes and buildings, where 559 people were believed to have been trapped; limited resources prevented teams from reaching about 226 others, the Palestine Chronicle reported, citing Anadolu. The current phase, launched on July 19, covers searches at 147 destroyed homes across Gaza City and northern and central Gaza, where an estimated 1,072 bodies were believed to remain, Basal said when it began.

Why the recovery is so slow

Human Rights Watch said this month that Palestinian civil defence authorities have recovered over 630 bodies from under the rubble since November 2025 and estimate that over 8,000 remain buried. The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that the passage of time is making identification of remains increasingly difficult, with unexploded ordnance buried in the debris forcing teams in some areas to remove rubble a few centimetres at a time, CNN reported. The UN Development Programme has estimated that between 8,000 and 10,000 bodies remain trapped beneath the rubble, and that Gaza's roughly 61 million tonnes of debris could take years to clear.

Palestinian authorities and Hamas have accused Israel of failing to allow the heavy equipment and machinery into Gaza that, they say, it was expected to permit under the first phase of the ceasefire agreement that took effect on October 10, 2025, and have urged the United Nations and mediators to press for its entry along with specialised rescue teams, Quds News Network reported. Israel has not publicly responded to the latest remarks in the reports cited here. For thousands of families, the issue is not statistics: they are still waiting to recover relatives buried beneath their own homes so they can bury them with dignity.