Gaza man recovers family remains after strike killed 39

Mahmoud Khalla, 40, visits a cemetery near Jabalia in northern Gaza each morning to sit by the graves of relatives killed when an Israeli strike destroyed his family’s five-storey home on December 21, 2023. All 39 people inside were killed, Al Jazeera reports. Khalla left the house shortly before the strike and is the only member of his family left.

A family gathered, then an explosion

Khalla’s wife, three children, parents, two brothers and their families, sister and her children, and other relatives had gathered at the family home in Jabalia that day. Israeli tanks had surrounded the area, and food was already scarce under an ongoing siege. In the evening, Khalla left to search for provisions.

He told Al Jazeera he had been away about 15 minutes when he heard a large explosion. He ran back and found that his family’s house had been targeted. Neighbours helped him try to rescue anyone trapped under the rubble, but Israeli air attacks, quadcopters and surveillance aircraft made the search impossible. A surveillance aircraft dropped a bomb on them, forcing them to flee, he said. They returned the next morning. Ambulances and civil defence teams had also been unable to reach the site that night.

When Khalla returned, he called out to family members who might still be alive. No one answered. He said the five floors of rubble made it impossible to pull anyone out.

The attack followed another strike nine days earlier on his uncles’ house opposite, which killed 18 people. The rest of the family had gone south, leaving Khalla with no home and almost no relatives nearby.

Sleeping in the streets

In the months that followed, Khalla was displaced and alone. He moved between streets looking for somewhere to sleep and struggled to find shelter with families he did not know. He said he slept in streets, cars or vehicles whenever he found one open. He described being totally lonely and homeless, unsure whether a bullet, rocket or hunger would reach him first.

After a ceasefire was announced for Gaza in October 2025, families began searching for missing loved ones. Nearly a year later, an estimated 8,000 people remain missing, with bodies likely under rubble or in other locations.

Recovering the remains by hand

Months after the ceasefire began and bombing decreased, Khalla started recovering his family’s remains himself. They had been entombed in the ruins of their home for 29 months. He approached civil defence, the Red Cross and other authorities, but said a severe shortage of equipment and the large number of families seeking help meant they could offer little assistance.

With friends and neighbours volunteering, he began recovering the remains by hand around May. The process took three months. Sometimes they recovered one person in a day; sometimes it took two days. The first remains he found were two relatives who had been sheltering with the family. The last were his sister and her children, buried together.

He buried them at a cemetery near Jabalia an-Nazla, in northern Gaza. Khalla said he felt a great sense of relief when he finally buried them.

Source: Al Jazeera.