Four weeks have passed since Hamza Malaka, 2, was rescued from the debris of his family’s Gaza City home.
It has been four weeks since this toddler, who had recently joined the fastest-growing group of injured children in this Palestinian enclave—wounded children with no living family—was given a rhythmic recital of the Quran by a stranger in the hospital.
Even after more than four weeks, some of the 26 members of his family who were slain on that day still lie beneath their family house, not under the earth. This is contrary to the custom of this mostly Muslim town, but it is becoming more and more common in Gaza.
A relative named Mohammad Malaka, who lives in San Diego, said, “They’re still trying to get the bodies out of those buildings.” He said that there may still be more bodies buried, as the search is ongoing for some of them.
In a Zoom interview, he said to NBC News, “Imagine how horrific it is.” “They’re dead, but it will take days to get the resources to remove them and bury them properly.”
Following the terror attack by Hamas, the Israeli military has been heavily bombarding the Gaza Strip, resulting in a pile of bodies as well as indignities.
The war has flipped life upside down and taken away the customs of traditional funeral procedures from the deceased in this heavily populated and impoverished region of Palestine, where families have long been forced to adjust to loss and laying the dead to rest is frequently a community occasion.
Health officials in Gaza say that over 11,200 people have died, including over 4,600 children. NBC News spoke with a number of Gaza residents, including a gravedigger, a morgue worker, and grieving relatives. They described overcrowded morgues and mass graves full of unidentifiable bodies in the besieged strip.
Many people are being forced to seek cover indoors due to the increasing Israeli aerial and ground assaults, which is causing excruciating suffering for the community and forcing them to grieve in solitude.
“No one can visit the dead’s home since death exists in every home, on every street, and in every community. Who then approaches whom? stated 26-year-old Mohamed Abu Obaid, a videographer who is seeking refuge in Khan Younis.
Numerous Palestinians, numbering in the tens of thousands, have fled southward. Those who left on foot have reported finding decomposing bodies scattered across highways. Al-Shifa, the primary hospital in Gaza, used refrigerated food trucks as makeshift morgues to handle the influx of corpses.
However, staff claimed they were excavating a mass grave inside the complex to bury about 170 dead because the hospital’s fuel was running low and there was fighting all around it. Some medics said that bodies left unattended in Al-Shifa’s courtyard had started to decompose; these bodies had been attacked by dogs and could not be cleansed or interred outdoors due to the possibility of gunfire surrounding the hospital.
“They bury them quickly.”
The Malaka family had resorted to collective sheltering before being completely destroyed: little children, an expectant mother, and elderly family members were crammed into a multistory apartment complex in Gaza City’s Zaitoun district.
However, the extent of devastation in Gaza has made it more difficult for first responders to recover the dead and injured. According to the UN, about half of all dwelling units have been damaged. The U.N. reports that 2,700 individuals, including 1,500 children, have been reported missing and are thought to be either dead or trapped beneath the debris.
Islamic burial customs emphasize laying the body to rest immediately in its natural state to preserve the dignity of the deceased, hence Muslims try to bury their dead within 24 hours and no later than three days.
Locals in Gaza claim that thousands of people would join funeral processions and mourning ceremonies during periods when there was no conflict. Typically, mourners would assemble around the body at a mosque to offer prayers for the deceased. This would be followed by a sizable procession from the mosque to the burial site. Following that, the grieving family would welcome neighbors inside their home to give their condolences for a minimum of three days, if not more.
According to Saeed Elshorbagy, a morgue worker at Khan Younis’ Nasser hospital, however, the “enormous” influx of bodies now means that hospital personnel swiftly wrap a body in a burial cloth and take it from the mortuary to the outdoor hospital yard once a death is declared by a medical examiner.
The medical personnel then advises any family members in attendance to transport it straight to a burial spot with “minimum people.”
Elshorbagy remarked, “There is no time for prayers today.” He was alluding to the custom of group afternoon prayers held prior to a funeral. “It can’t be the same as before when they take him home and say goodbye.”
In hospital courtyards or on the streets, spontaneous funeral prayers are taking place as a result of numerous mosques being destroyed or being threatened with attack. At the actual burial place, there is hardly any attendance.
The local videographer, Abu Obaid, observed, “They bury them fast.”
“Screams, sadness, and shock” are what families experience when they find out their loved one has died, he added.
“It’s heart-shaking, agonizing feelings,” he continued.
However, there’s often no final farewell because word of death or the fear of death is so pervasive in the enclave. Abu Obaid claimed that an airstrike on his home a week ago killed his cousins, but he was unable to attend the funeral due to the continuous, intense bombing.
“I wasn’t close to the hospital. None of them were visible to me,” he remarked.
Deaths and sorrows
Certain corpses are difficult to identify.
The majority of the dead had deformed limbs and “very critical” amputations of hands and legs, so it can take several days before a family member can identify a body, according to hospital workers and residents. Elshorbagy continued, “Some families have been able to identify their lost loved ones thanks to hints like a particular birthmark on their face or the clothing they were wearing.”
At other times, the morgue employee reported receiving two to three kg of unidentifiable “shattered bones or flesh.” According to him, in those instances, their remains were interred with those of other known family members rather than being buried separately.
In an attempt to identify their dead, some families have taken to writing their children’s names in marker on their limbs. Families in Gaza have begun donning ID bands as well.
However, identifying the deceased is just one issue. Another is finding a place to bury them.
Gravedigger Jihad Elshamali, who works at multiple cemeteries throughout the Gaza Strip, reported that he had recently completed burial plots with numbers instead of family names.
Elshamali stated, “To be honest, the situation is very tragic,” adding that he had occasionally interred up to fifteen persons in a single cemetery site.
He claimed that he is so afraid of the quantity of missiles over Gaza that he occasionally permits families to “risk their lives” in order to bury their loved ones without him.
Elshamali claimed that merchants had raised prices for essential burial supplies including cement, tiles, and brick due to the Israeli-imposed siege of Gaza, which was impeding his capacity to do his duties.
“Even the water to mix the clay to make a grave cover is nowhere to be found.”
Families in this area have always been accustomed to the possibility of death, but the present circumstances have made life much more difficult for Palestinians in Gaza who take great satisfaction in upholding their customs.
Everything needed for the funeral service was available in the past. ElShamali stated, “They came to bury with dignity.”
The only solace available to Palestinian expatriates like Mohammad Malaka is the fragmented social media video updates of his deceased family that are making the rounds.
A recent Facebook post revealed that some of his family members had finally been laid to rest. However, he later tweeted that other members of his extended family had been injured and died in an airstrike.
He remarked, “This is just one story of the thousands of Palestinian families going through the same pain; it is not about the Malaka family.”
Source: NBCNEWS