Destruction of vital lifting gear halts search for thousands buried under rubble

The destruction of key heavy machinery on Tuesday following reported Israeli airstrikes has brought rescue and recovery efforts to a standstill, making it even harder to reach the estimated 11,000 bodies still trapped under the debris.

According to local authorities, the strikes put a halt to all solid waste and debris removal operations, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told journalists at a briefing in New York.

Until recently, bulldozers and other excavation equipment had been used in painstaking efforts to recover bodies from the wreckage.

One bulldozer operated by Atif Nasr – who before the war worked building and repairing roads – had become vital in the grim task of extracting the remains of loved ones from the rubble.

He was interviewed by a UN News correspondent in Gaza before the strike but now his grim but vital work has come to a standstill after his vehicle was destroyed.

Months trapped in rubble

The Dahdouh family managed to recover the remains of their son, Omar, from the ruins of their home, almost a year after he was killed in an airstrike which levelled their seven-story building.

Standing at the site, Omar’s brother, Moayad, shared the family’s ordeal.

“His body remained trapped under the rubble for nearly a year. After the war, we tried to retrieve him, but with the building so large and with no heavy machinery available, it was impossible.

“We searched everywhere for a bulldozer to reach the ground floor – where Omar had been – but during the war, Israeli forces destroyed or burned all the bulldozers or excavators that could have helped us.”

A decent burial

In southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, the Dajani family continues to live in what’s left of their destroyed home, where the bodies of three of their children remain buried.

Their father Ali remembers the time they died with a heavy heart.

“We fled to the beach area during the bombings. When we returned, the house was gone – and our children were still under the debris. We are forced to live here, but this is not life. It is unbearable,” he told our correspondent.

“We have no clean water, no food. We are lost. All we ask is to recover our children’s bodies. To bury the dead is sacred. That is all we want.”

Just days ago, Mr. Dajani spoke as diggers worked nearby to clear away the debris. That effort, too, has come to a halt for now.

A mounting humanitarian crisis

The UN estimates that approximately 92 per cent of all residential buildings in Gaza – around 436,000 homes – have been damaged or destroyed since the start of the conflict.

The resulting debris amounts to nearly 50 million tonnes – an overwhelming quantity of rubble that would take decades to remove under current conditions.

Humanitarian organizations warn that the delay in debris removal and body recovery is not only deepening psychological trauma across Gaza but also threatens to become a public health and environmental catastrophe.