Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor on Thursday said it estimates that over 13,000 Palestinians are either missing under debris, buried in indiscriminate mass graves, or forcibly disappeared in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, where some have even been killed.
This estimate is based on initial reports of missing people, and the true number is likely higher, the human rights group said in a statement.
Given the ongoing military attacks and siege by the Israeli government, as well as the illegal practices of the Israeli army that have scattered Palestinian families—particularly by forcing them to repeatedly evacuate without safe passages, separating family members and forcing them to move to different areas, arresting and forcibly disappearing some of them, and cutting off communication between families—it is not possible to confirm the precise number of missing people at this time.
Euro-Med Monitor field teams together with civil defense crews and rescue teams recently used their limited resources to recover the bodies of 422 Palestinians from Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Medical Complex as well as Khan Yunis, which is located in the south of the Gaza Strip, after the Israeli army withdrew from these areas over the course of the past few days.
Family members of the victims also took part in the search and recovery process, where the victims were occasionally buried next to their homes or in haphazard mass graves, or moved to nearby hospitals.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor earlier documented that more than 120 random mass graves were established in the Gaza Strip governorates to bury those killed in military attacks, due to the difficulty of accessing the main and regular cemeteries and the continued Israeli military operations.
“Urgent international action is needed to set up special mechanisms and specialised teams to remove debris from homes and buildings that Israel’sarmy has bombed, rescue those trapped alive under the rubble, and retrieve the thousands of dead bodies stuck under it since the genocide began on 7 October 2023.”
