GAZA CITY, AUGUST 4, 2026: Nearly three years after a devastating strike reduced homes in Gaza City’s Al-Sabra neighbourhood to rubble, the remains of 112 people from two extended Palestinian families were finally laid to rest in a mass funeral, according to Gaza Civil Defense and local reports.
The dead belonged to the Abu Sharia and Al-Hasayna families, whose homes were struck around November 22–23, 2023, shortly before the war’s first temporary humanitarian truce.
For surviving relatives, the funeral was not simply a burial. It was the end of an agonising wait for loved ones who had effectively disappeared beneath mountains of concrete.
According to Gaza Civil Defense, recovery teams spent approximately 136 hours excavating the devastated residential area, often working under extremely difficult conditions and with limited equipment. They ultimately recovered the remains of 112 people.
Civil Defense officials said those recovered included 40 children, 38 women and seven people with disabilities.
The same authorities say the original attack killed hundreds, citing a figure of 308 civilians, while approximately 157 people may still remain beneath the rubble. Those figures have not been independently verified, and determining the precise toll from individual strikes remains extraordinarily difficult because of wartime access restrictions, communications disruptions and the destruction of records and infrastructure.
But on Tuesday, numbers became coffins, names and grieving families.
Amid the shattered landscape of Al-Sabra, relatives and residents gathered to perform funeral prayers and bury those whose remains had finally been recovered. Al Jazeera described the ceremony as Gaza’s largest mass funeral of its kind.
The burial also illuminated another unresolved tragedy of the war: the missing beneath Gaza’s ruins.
Thousands of Palestinians have been reported missing or feared buried under collapsed buildings. Recovery operations have repeatedly been hampered by destroyed roads, shortages of fuel and heavy machinery, unstable structures and security restrictions.
For the Abu Sharia and Al-Hasayna families, the excavation has brought some answers after nearly three years, but not all. As 112 were carried to their graves, others were still being searched for beneath the ruins.
In Al-Sabra, the war did not end when the bombs stopped falling. For families waiting beside the rubble, it continued in the terrible space between knowing someone was gone and finally being able to bury them.
JANPATH NEWS NETWORK (JNN)
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