Palestinians unearth fresh wounds as Gaza's al-Shifa hospital burials are relocated
The courtyards of Gaza's al-Shifa hospital were once again filled with grief as Palestinians gathered around civil defence teams recovering the bodies of their loved ones.
Khalid Abu Assi, one of many who came to recover the remains of their relatives, told Middle East Eye he was there to retrieve the body of his son, killed in an Israeli strike on an aid convoy during the war on Gaza.
"God chose for him to become a martyr," said the 60-year-old, recalling how his son Ibrahim, a medical student, died while trying to retrieve flour for their family.
"We had to bury our son in al-Shifa because there were no cemeteries available," Abu Assi explained.
"We couldn't bury him anywhere else - anyone who left the compound was shot at.
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"This pain is unforgettable. You raise a child for 19 or 20 years, and you think you can forget them in a day or two? There's no day you can ever forget your child. God is sufficient."
Nearly a year ago, al-Shifa hospital's grounds were filled with the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians killed during Israel's devastating war on Gaza, which included a two-week siege on the medical facility.
With limited access to cemeteries and morgues overwhelmed with the dead, families were forced to dig temporary graves in the hospital courtyards. Some victims were buried in mass graves by Israeli troops during their assault.
When the Israeli army withdrew from al-Shifa in early April 2024, it left behind destroyed buildings and piles of corpses.
The complex, the largest medical facility in Palestine, was left in complete ruins.
On Thursday, Gaza's civil defence teams began relocating the bodies from the hospital courtyards to the city's cemeteries, taking advantage of a fragile ceasefire.
Bereaved mother
Among those present at al-Shifa during the excavation were families of Palestinians who went missing or whose bodies disappeared during the war.
Tears in her eyes, Soha al-Sharif, a mother searching for her son's remains, hoped he had been buried during Israel's siege. She had been forced to flee south of the Gaza Strip, leaving her son Jihad's body in the hospital's freezers.
"I've been telling my story since this morning, and I've told it a thousand times. I'm tired... I came here to look for my son, he's a martyr," she told MEE.
'I just want to honour his burial. I don't want to feel that no one came for him, that he left this world alone'
- Soha al-Sharif, Palestinian mother
She had thought her son had been buried with prayers performed according to Islamic tradition. But when she returned, she was told his burial had not been confirmed.
"Our children's bodies are scattered and lost. We don't know where they are," she sobbed. "They said they buried unidentified people. Are our children unidentified? Didn't they have names?"
Sharif recalled the first raid on the hospital at the start of the war in November 2023, describing indiscriminate bombing. "There were so many, torn apart, many martyred and many were gone. These people were also considered unidentified because no one was able to bury their child."
Heartbroken by her loss, the mother visits every day, searching for her son's remains. "I call out his name among the graves. I tell him: 'Jihad, I'm your mother... Please get up. I'm your mother. I won't leave you alone.'"
Tearfully, Sharif said she would find peace if she could recover her son's remains.
"No mother wants her son to leave her embrace, but this is God's will... God chose him as a martyr. I just want to honour his burial. I don't want to feel that no one came for him, that he left this world alone."
Decomposed, unidentified
Since the repeated Israeli attacks on al-Shifa, efforts have been made to recover bodies. However, many of the recovered bodies remained unidentified, with some badly decomposed due to the area being bulldozed by the Israeli army.
The Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza said on Thursday that 48 bodies buried in the complex were transported for burial in official cemeteries in cooperation with medical crews from the health ministry and the police.
Of those corpses exhumed, 38 were identified by their families and will be buried in other cemeteries, while 10 more were handed over to the Forensic Medicine Department at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, according to Raed al-Dahshan, director of civil defence forces in Gaza.
Dahshan noted that transporting the bodies from the hospital will take several days, as there are nearly 160. The health director urged families who were forced to bury loved ones in the hospital to return and rebury them elsewhere.
According to Al Jazeera, the hospital courtyard is set to be converted into a field hospital to treat the wounded amid a collapsed healthcare system in the besieged enclave.
Muhammad al-Mogayer, director of civil defence supplies, told MEE that the temporary graves at al-Shifa Hospital are among many created after the Israeli army bulldozed cemeteries in surrounding areas.
Mogayer estimates that around 180 bodies have been found within the hospital's grounds in total, with approximately 50 still unidentified.
He explained that several steps are being taken to document the bodies, including issuing death certificates. For the unidentified remains, efforts to identify them will continue, after which they will be buried in al-Koraa Cemetery.
“We at the civil defence are struggling greatly due to a lack of resources and capabilities,” said Mogayer, noting that specialised excavation tools have not been permitted into Gaza.
“Fourteen thousand martyrs across the Gaza Strip are still trapped under the rubble while we continue working with simple manual tools.”
A UN report published in December 2024 highlighted that Israeli attacks on Gaza's hospitals - including al-Shifa - were part of a "pattern" of destruction that has severely crippled the healthcare system, leaving 22 out of 38 hospitals non-functional.
The report called for independent investigations into these incidents and accountability for violations of international law.
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