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55 recovered after strike
Gaza’s civil defence recovered the remains of 55 Palestinians from beneath the rubble of the Malka family home in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, after an Israeli air strike on November 19, 2023.
“The remains of 55 Palestinians have been recovered from the rubble of a residential building in Gaza City”
Colonel Muhammad Abu Dan, who was supervising the rescue teams, said they had been searching for more than 60 bodies of victims from the Malka family over the past 72 hours.
Ahram Online said the Israeli occupation forces launched an airstrike on the Malka family home on 19 November 2023, instantly killing 41 of its members, and that the family’s death toll eventually exceeded that number as others remained trapped beneath the rubble.
Ahram Online also said the recovery operation is part of the second phase of a wider “Recovery of Martyrs' Bodies” project, allocated 800 working hours and covering the search for people missing under the rubble of 147 destroyed homes across Gaza City and the northern and central governorates.
Al Jazeera reported that the recovery operation concluded on Saturday, marking a slow, largely manual campaign hampered by a chronic shortage of the heavy machinery needed to clear broken concrete.
Funeral and competing figures
As most of the bodies were recovered, a joint funeral procession was expected to take place next weekend, according to Al Jazeera.
Ahram Online said the remains will be buried together in a joint funeral procession early next week, after most of the bodies were retrieved following a third consecutive day of searching.
Anadolu Ajansı reported that families finally bid farewell to around 100 loved ones in Gaza City, with remains draped in Palestinian flags near the Imam al-Shafi’i Mosque in the southeastern Zeitoun neighbourhood.
Anadolu Ajansı quoted Maryam Hassan al-Balawi as saying, “My husband and my children were killed. I have no one left except my only surviving daughter, Malak,” while describing how she had waited more than two years to reach her relatives.
Al Jazeera said Gaza’s Ministry of Health, along with UN agencies and aid organisations, estimate that between 10,000 and 14,000 people remain missing under rubble across the territory.
Equipment limits and wider impact
Ahram Online said rescue teams faced major obstacles due to a shortage of heavy machinery and equipment, and it quoted AFP Colonel Mohammed Abu Dan as appealing to international humanitarian organizations to step up support so more bodies can be recovered from destroyed buildings across the territory.
“appealed to international humanitarian organizations to step up support so more bodies can be recovered”
Al Jazeera said Abu Dan called on international humanitarian organisations to provide as much equipment as possible so that his teams can recover the largest number of people possible from the rubble.
Ahram Online described the Zeitoun recovery as part of a broader effort that, in the first phase beginning in late November 2025 and running for 500 working hours, recovered around 333 of an estimated 559 bodies missing beneath the rubble of 54 homes and buildings.
Ahram Online also said a separate dig launched at Nuseirat began clearing rubble from the collapsed Engineers' Tower in the Nuseirat refugee camp, where civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said crews had already recovered around 160 bodies from the tower site since the start of the war.
In parallel, Al Jazeera reported that since the “ceasefire” took hold last October, at least 1,344 people have been killed and 4,464 injured while at least 815 bodies have been recovered from the rubble, and it said the overall death toll since October 2023 has risen to 73,470 with at least 174,540 injured.