Gaza holds mass funeral for extended family recovered from wartime rubble

In Gaza City, row after row of human remains — 112 people in all, and hauntingly from the same extended family — were laid in the morning sun, each draped in a Palestinian flag.

This large family group, including dozens of women and children from the Hassayna and Abu Sharia clan in Gaza City, died nearly three years ago. 

An Israeli military strike hit the clan’s residential compound in the second month of the war, on Nov. 23, 2023, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense, which operates under the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.

Israel’s military has not responded to a request for comment about the strike, but said throughout the conflict that it targeted militants, accusing Hamas of operating in areas that put civilians at risk. 

Recovery teams were only able to access the site in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City in mid-July, exhuming and collecting decomposed remains over the last two weeks of the month. 

Gaza authorities described this as the strip’s biggest mass funeral since Oct. 7, 2023, after Hamas-led militants stormed southern Israel, igniting fierce Israeli retribution that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians in the nearly three years since, according to figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry.

One mourner showered flower petals over the covered bodies of the Hassayna and Abu Sharia clan as women and children watched from atop partly demolished buildings around the earthen square. A banner with the faces of dozens of children served as the backdrop of a speech from the spokesperson of Gaza’s Civil Defense. 

“O nation, why are children getting killed in Gaza? Why are women getting killed in Gaza?” asked Mahmoud Basal at the service. “Why are massacres committed against innocents in Gaza?”

The words “Stop the genocide in Gaza,” in both Arabic and English, had been scrawled on the podium he spoke from. 

Israeli officials have vehemently disputed accusations that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, saying it was Hamas that attempted genocide with its Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish state.