Mass graves found in Khan Younis city in the southern Gaza Strip, from which the Israeli army withdrew after months of attacks and occupation, highlight Palestinians’ grief.
The Israeli army withdrew from Khan Younis on April 7 following a four-month ground offensive. With the withdrawal, mass graves began to be found in the city and bodies were collected from the rubble of houses and roadsides.
Speaking to Anadolu and stating that she lost her son Nabil Mohammed Zedan in an Israeli attack on Jan. 22, a Palestinian mother said she was there to find his body.
Noting that her son was a 4th-year student in the law department at the university, she added: “I have been looking for my son for three months. During this time, I have not slept, I have not shed a tear.”
“I applied to the Red Cross, civil defense, the Ministry of Health, and everywhere else. I even opened the covers of the martyrs I saw on the street to see if they were my son.”
She said that when Iran strikes Israel with drones, Arab countries are concerned about Israel’s security, and asked: “What about our children? Why aren’t you worried about them? I am a mother, see and hear my burning heart.”
– They drew ‘smiles’ on bodies to provoke Palestinians
Abdullah Abu Mustafa, another Palestinian who accompanied the work in the area, said they buried his daughter, cousin, cousin’s wife, and cousin’s daughter on Jan. 22.
Stressing that when the Israeli army entered the city by land, it blocked the road to Khan Younis cemetery, Abu Mustafa noted that for this reason, they buried the bodies in Nasser Hospital.
On Eid al-Fitr, people communicated among themselves to take the bodies out of the temporary graves and bury them in a cemetery worthy of them, he added, saying: “When we arrived, we saw that Israel had exhumed all of the approximately 1,000 martyrs we buried. They changed their clothes.”
“We saw the Israeli star on the martyrs’ clothes. They went so far to provoke the Palestinian people that they drew smiles on the bodies of our martyrs.”
Emphasizing that they found three to four mass graves in the area and that there were 30-40 bodies in each of them, Abu Mustafa underlined that the people tried to identify their dead relatives by their clothes, but 70% of the bodies could not be identified because the clothes were removed.
Abu Mustafa said they found some of the bodies with their heads down and their feet up and four to five bodies stacked on top of each other.
– ‘Working for 3 days, dug up about 150 martyrs’
Raid Raid Sakr, the civil defense official who led the process of exhuming bodies from the mass grave opened by the Israeli army in the garden of Nasser Hospital, said the people informed the civil defense unit when they could not find their relatives where they were buried.
Emphasizing that civil defense teams immediately came to the area and tried to locate the bodies with simple equipment, Sakr said: “We saw that Israel opened a mass grave.”
“According to the reports we received, there are hundreds of martyrs in the grave. It is said that there are 300-400 martyrs. We have been working for three days. During this time, we have unearthed about 150 martyrs. There are many unidentified bodies.”
Sakr said the identified bodies were taken and buried by their relatives, while the unidentified ones were buried by civil defense teams.
– Decomposed bodies found without head and skin
Ismail Al-Thawabteh, the head of Gaza’s government media office, said: “Some 150 bodies have been found in two graves.”
He said around 700 people are still unaccounted for since the Israeli withdrawal from Khan Younis on April 7 following a four-month ground offensive, adding that this is a real crime and massacre committed by the Israeli occupation.
Al-Thawabteh said they believe that there are hundreds of “martyrs” executed by Israel and buried in mass graves, highlighting that they retained a large number of half corpses, completely decomposed, with no skin or head.
Pointing out that what happened in Nasser Hospital also happened in Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and before that, in Kamal Adwan Hospital, he said: “The Israeli soldiers removed the bodies of martyrs and buried them in mass graves in the hospital complex.”
“However, government-affiliated teams are working hard to uncover this crime and identify the bodies.”
Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border attack by Palestinian group Hamas in which some 1,200 people were killed.
More than 34,100 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and around 77,000 others have been injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.