Red Cross says over 6,000 Palestinians missing since Oct. 7: Report

GENEVA

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said about 6,400 Palestinians have been reported missing since Oct.7, 2023 and they are yet to be found, a British daily reported on Friday.

It is assumed that they are either trapped under debris, buried without identification, or held in Israeli detention, while others have been separated from their loved ones, who have been unable to contact them, according to the report of The Guardian.

Since April, the ICRC said about 1,100 new cases of missing people have been registered and remain unsolved.

"Each week we can receive anywhere between 500 and 2,500 calls to our hotlines, and the majority of these are requests for missing family members," Sarah Davies, an ICRC spokesperson, said in the report.

"The level of requests fluctuates, sometimes depending on the situation in areas of Gaza – if there are hostilities close to large numbers of people, or evacuation instructions issued, our hotline operators receive more calls with tracing requests in the hours and days that follow," Davies added.

She underlined people can be separated "easily" under such "chaotic situations."

She added that they can even lose contact when people are injured and taken to hospital in an ambulance as their family members do not always know which one they are at.

"There are untold reasons people get separated in a war zone," she added.

Israel has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas. The military campaign has turned much of the enclave of 2.3 million people into ruins, leaving most civilians homeless and at risk of famine.

Israel is also accused of committing genocide in the besieged Palestinian enclave, and a case is continuing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.