Buried answers: Gaza families' unbearable wait for missing continues amid three years of Israel's genocide

Families face ‘ambiguous loss,’ unsure whether missing relatives are dead or detained, Red Cross says UN officials warn rubble removal in areas under Israeli military control risks destroying human remains and evidence of possible international crimes As the Gaza war enters its fourth year, thousands of Palestinian families remain without answers about loved ones who disappeared amid three years of Israeli attacks and destruction. The scale of the task is immense. The UN estimates the war has generated millions of tonnes of debris across Gaza, while Palestinian Civil Defense estimates that more than 8,000 people remain missing beneath the rubble. For many families, even knowing where to search is impossible. Missing relatives could be buried beneath destroyed buildings, detained or otherwise unaccounted for, leaving families unable to hold a burial or know whether to keep hoping for their return. Pat Griffiths, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Jerusalem, described seeing families gather at hospitals when buses carrying released Palestinian detainees arrive in Gaza. Some hold photographs of missing relatives, not knowing whether the person they are searching for has been detained or killed. ICRC psychologists describe what those families experience as "ambiguous loss.” "You don't know if your loved one you haven't heard from ... is alive or if they've been killed. You don't know if they're detained or not," he told Anadolu. "Thousands of people live with this limbo. This pain of not knowing what to do or how to feel exactly. They're stuck." Amani Al Naouq, ICRC spokesperson in Gaza, said families repeatedly bring the organization the same question. "We just want to know what happened to them," she recalled them saying. "'If they are dead, we can be relieved. But the fact that we don't know if they are dead or alive' – that's one of the most difficult things for them." Al Naouq told Anadolu that some families keep contacting the ICRC even when they know there may be no immediate answer, simply because they need somewhere to share what is weighing on them. Others, she said, eventually begin to accept that a missing relative is dead despite having no confirmation. The uncertainty is unfolding amid an enormous recovery challenge, with much of Gaza's built environment destroyed or damaged and human remains believed to lie within the ruins alongside unexploded ordnance, hazardous materials and potential evidence relevant to investigations into international crimes. Recovery teams face 'huge' task The cost of removing and managing more than 68 million metric tons of debris in Gaza exceeds $1.7 billion, according to the April 2026 Gaza Strip Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment by the European Union, UN and World Bank. The effort also requires access to heavy machinery and specialized equipment, along with consistent fuel supplies – conditions that are currently far from being met. Al Naouq said recovery teams have extremely limited heavy machinery, sometimes relying on one or two excavators contracted from private suppliers, while much of the work is carried out with small equipment and by hand. With limited capacity, teams depend heavily on families to pinpoint where relatives were last seen – the building, the room and who was with them. That forces families to relive moments when they were unable to reach or save their loved ones, Al Naouq said. "It's actually back again an open wound for these families," she said. Griffiths, who recently spent a week in Gaza, described seeing "kilometers and kilometers just mountains of rubble," much of it posing dangers from unexploded remnants of war. The ICRC supports the rental of two excavators for recovery teams, he said, but that is "a drop in the ocean." "The scale of the task ahead of them – it's daunting. It's huge." Griffiths said the problem is compounded by access restrictions, with search-and-recovery teams unable to reach much of the Gaza Strip to carry out their work safely. DNA testing is also currently unavailable in Gaza, according to the ICRC. Forensic teams instead rely on information including age, sex, height, previous injuries, dental information, clothing, personal belongings and where remains were recovered. But time can erase those clues through decomposition and skeletonization, while moving rubble can separate remains from their original location. "The more time passes, the harder identifying the deceased gets," Griffiths said. Drawing on ICRC experience in conflicts including Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, he said searches for missing people can continue for years or even decades. "It's one of the tragedies of armed conflict," he said. 'The war is not over until her husband is found' Mayy El Sheikh, of the UN Human Rights Office in the occupied Palestinian territory, recalled interviewing a 37-year-old woman with a disability whose husband remained missing after an attack on his family home in northern Gaza in 2023. The couple have a 5-year-old son. Almost every member of her husband's family was killed, El Sheikh said. Some were recovered, but her husband was not. The woman believes she knows the mound of rubble containing him but cannot reach it because it lies beyond the deployment line for Israeli forces – the so-called "yellow line." Recalling all of this was "excruciatingly painful" for her, El Sheikh said. "She felt that she couldn't support her son recovering as well because he has no grave to visit, and that she failed her husband, that she was not able to honor him." "For her, the war is not over until her husband is found," she added. Other families have believed missing relatives were dead only to later recognize them alive in images or videos from Israeli prisons, El Sheikh said. "It's that level of uncertainty, not knowing even if your loved one is alive or dead," she said. Evidence could be 'lost forever' Concerns over the fate of potential evidence within Gaza's rubble have recently been raised by UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory Francesca Albanese, who warned that the removal, crushing and relocation of debris in areas under Israeli military control could destroy human remains and potential evidence of alleged international crimes. El Sheikh also warned about what may be disappearing as Gaza's ruins are disturbed. "It is almost inevitable that evidence is being lost, damaged, or disturbed as we speak," she said, citing the scale of destruction, access restrictions, reported rubble removal and crushing, and shortages of heavy machinery and forensic identification capacity. She said large parts of Gaza remain inaccessible to independent observers and investigators, particularly areas under Israeli military control, making it difficult to establish what is happening to human remains and potential evidence there. El Sheikh said there have also been repeated reports since the announcement of the ceasefire of remains being returned to Palestinian authorities without information that could be critical to identification and establishing what happened. "They have returned remains to the Palestinian authorities, sometimes even partial remains with no identification and no clarity on where they were recovered or how they were killed," she said. Griffiths said that if remains are moved with rubble, their original location – an important piece of identification evidence – can be lost, while remains may also become fragmented, Srinivasan Muralidhar, chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, said the commission has received reports of rubble removal and the possibility of evidence being destroyed. "We are concerned that the removal of rubble could result in evidence getting lost forever," he said. Muralidhar compared evidence gathering to assembling a jigsaw puzzle, saying material recovered from the rubble could complement witness testimony and medical and forensic evidence. Its loss would not prevent investigators from establishing alleged crimes, he said, but could leave important gaps. Its importance goes beyond potential prosecutions, Muralidhar added. "In international law, there is a known concept of the right to the truth. Every family wants to know what exactly happened." For relatives who have waited years without recovering their loved ones, information about what happened can be "very, very valuable as a piece of memory and most importantly for closure," he said. Access needed to recover the missing Griffiths said that resolving the fate of Gaza's missing will require greater humanitarian access and significantly more resources for search-and-recovery teams. He called for more heavy machinery, including excavators, to be allowed into Gaza so teams can scale up recovery operations, while also stressing the need for safe access to areas they currently cannot reach. "Humanitarian access for the purpose of search and recovery work – it's also really important," he said. Muralidhar also called for international cooperation to accelerate the process. "We have to have cooperation across countries to help clear the rubble quicker," he said, stressing the importance of not creating more rubble. “This is a huge task right in front of us, and if the attacks do not stop now, things might get further worse and go beyond a point when we'll all be just shrugging our shoulders and watching helplessly,” he warned. A place to mourn For one family encountered by Griffiths and Al Naouq, that answer eventually came. The ICRC has supported the establishment of a cemetery for unidentified dead in Deir al-Balah, part of efforts to preserve information about remains that cannot immediately be identified. Griffiths said that after remains are recovered, forensic teams seek to collect as much identifying information as possible and create a corresponding file. When identification is not possible, the remains can be laid to rest in an individual grave marked with a unique serial number linked to that information. The ICRC is also supporting efforts to establish an information-sharing system between recovery teams, forensic authorities and those managing cemeteries so that information collected about remains is preserved for possible future identification. The aim is to preserve both the dignity of the dead and the possibility of identifying them in the future, including if DNA testing eventually becomes available in Gaza. During a visit to a cemetery for unidentified dead in Deir al-Balah, they met a young woman whose husband's remains had eventually been identified through forensic methods available in Gaza. Griffiths recalled what finally having a grave meant to her. "She could visit his grave, she could stand at his grave, to be near him," he said. It gave her "a sense of closure, a way to mourn." For thousands of families still searching for someone who disappeared during the war, even that remains out of reach.