With bare hands, Gazans dig up bodies of relatives under debris

GAZA CITY, Palestine

With bare hands, Palestinians are trying during the four-day humanitarian pause to dig up bodies of relatives who had been killed in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip.

A footage, widely circulated on social media, showed the difficulties and challenges the people of the Gaza Strip are facing while exhuming the bodies of their relatives.

The clip shows a collapsed building, wherein individuals were trapped, requiring heavy machinery for their rescue.

These incidents reflect the difficulties facing civil defense teams, who are in dire need of heavy equipment to dig up the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes.

On Friday, the government media office in the Gaza Strip said that the number of missing people in the besieged enclave reached about 7,000, who are either "under the rubble or their bodies are dumped in the streets and roads."

It added that "the fate of the missing is still unknown, including more than 4,700 children and women."

The Palestinians are trying to take advantage of the temporary humanitarian pause between Israel and Hamas to search for the bodies of their relatives, who were killed in Israeli raids in various parts of the Gaza Strip, and to return to their homes.

Israel and Hamas swapped 24 Israelis and foreigners for 39 Palestinians from Israeli jails on Friday, the first day of a four-day humanitarian pause in fighting.

Under the agreement, the hostages will be released in batches over the course of four days.

Israel launched a massive military campaign against the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7.

It has since killed at least 14,854 Palestinians, including 6,150 children and over 4,000 women, according to health authorities in Gaza.

The official Israeli death toll stands at 1,200.