The woman screams at the foot of the grave: “It’s him, it’s him, my son, Nabil, Nabil… I swear! It’s Nabil. “It’s his jacket, it’s his jacket!” Nabil’s is one of nearly 400 bodies recovered in the last week from three mass graves in the Al Nasser hospital complex in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, according to emergency services. They were discovered after Israeli troops withdrew from the compound, which they had occupied in December. “My soul, my heart. I told you, I could recognize even his bones,” her mother adds between desperation and disbelief, accompanied by her daughter, after lowering the mask from her mouth. The two are in the middle of a group of people on the removed earth, according to a video of the scene recorded by the emergency services and provided to this newspaper by one of the officials from the Civil Defense corps in Gaza. The two women have just identified the half-disfigured body emerging from the white plastic shroud.
So far, less than half of the bodies have been identified and Palestinian emergency services estimate that around 300 more bodies remain to be exhumed. Local authorities, in the hands of Hamas, consider these to be “crimes against humanity” and the United Nations, which gives credibility to the complaints, has called for an investigation.
To search for Nabil’s personal belongings, a young man with blue rubber gloves opens the black jacket he is wearing over a light sweatshirt with red drawstrings on the hood, as seen in the recording. But his mother and his sister have no doubt: it is him. The young woman lies down on the ground, stands a short distance from the deceased with her hands open and speaks to him. “Bring some of the best perfume there is,” comments her mother with the intention of preparing the body for burial, already identified.
Some of the bodies, among which there are citizens of both sexes and all ages, show “indications” of having suffered an execution with shots to the head, or torture, some are tied, according to the written report of Dr. Momahed al Mughair , one of those responsible for the Civil Defense body and director of the documentation committee appointed to report on the exhumations. He also expresses suspicions that some victim may have been buried alive because he was not wrapped in the shroud required by Muslim funeral protocols. In addition, they have found victims wearing the same white clothing that the Israeli military dressed detainees in at the Al Nasser hospital, adds Al Mughair. With this information they describe what happened as “crimes against humanity” and ask for an international investigation.
Among the bodies identified is also that of the young Jamal Abu al Ola, who was sent several times on February 13, tied by the Israeli soldiers who surrounded the center, inside the Al Nasser hospital to ask those inside to will evacuate the facilities. He was wearing the white clothing that the Israeli military dresses detainees in. He is distinguished in a video that was widely shared on social networks at the time in which he spread these orders, and which was verified by media such as the BBC. Shortly after, Al Ola was shot dead, the authorities of the Strip denounced, supporting the complaint with images of the body and testimonies collected by the British dinner that considered the event “an execution.”
This Friday, for the eighth day, the work to recover victims continues. Some appear piled up on top of each other and up to three meters deep. So far, 165 bodies have been identified, like Nabil’s, which corresponds to 42% of the 392, according to the balance of the emergency services. They estimate that there could be around 300 more left to exhume.
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Some of the bodies, explains Momahed Al Mughair, are not wrapped in the white shrouds used in Gaza, but in black or blue ones. They were allegedly dug up and moved more than once for analysis by Israeli occupation authorities before being returned underground, he adds. Some have seams and sutures that do not correspond to those performed by health services in the Strip and, in some cases, organs are missing, this doctor denounces. The Israeli army admits having unearthed some bodies to check whether they were the remains of Hamas hostages still in the Palestinian enclave, but denies the rest of the accusations.
Since the Israeli Armed Forces invaded Gaza at the end of October, emergency services estimate that they have received some 100,000 calls to treat victims or collect bodies. The situation has been especially dramatic in the Khan Yunis area, which has been occupied by troops for about four months. The majority of these calls cannot be answered due to the prohibition of access to the military area or due to attacks and bombings, so what they often found when they arrived were “decomposing bodies or skeletons,” denounces the body of Civil defense. In addition to the more than 34,000 deaths officially recorded by the Gazan authorities, they estimate that there are no less than 7,000 victims still pending location or recovery. Many of them are still under the rubble.
The UN asks to investigate
The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, urged last Tuesday that an investigation be opened into these graves. The Civil Defense of the Strip also demands that Israel allow humanitarian organizations and the media access to Gaza so that they can be witnesses. Israel affirmed on Wednesday through a military spokesperson that these graves were dug months ago and believes that it is a “categorically false” case that is part of a “disinformation campaign aimed at delegitimizing Israel.”
The bodies in the graves belong to victims resulting from the Israeli army offensive, but it is not clear how many or which were buried by the military. Muslim tradition dictates burial in the first 24 hours after death and in beleaguered hospitals like those in Gaza, doctors or relatives often carry out burials where they can and however they can. In fact, two of the three Al Nasser graves are located next to the morgue.
“Some of them had their hands tied, which of course indicates serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, which is why the case must be subjected to further investigation,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for Volker Türk, the senior United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, on Tuesday in New York. So far, the International Criminal Court in The Hague has not ruled on the matter, despite maintaining an ongoing investigation into the atrocities committed during the war by both sides.
In Gaza’s two main hospitals, Al Nasser, in the south, and Al Shifa, in the north, mass burials of Palestinian civilians have been found once Israeli occupation troops withdrew from the facilities. “This would simply require the cooperation of both parties, but Israel does not want to allow these types of independent investigations,” Kenneth Roth, former director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) and professor at Princeton University, told Al Jazeera ( USA).