Fadl Hmaid stood in the courtyard of the Sheikh Radwan clinic in western Gaza City on Tuesday watching as emergency rescue teams dug up bodies from the ground. Hmaid hoped one would be his son, Mohammed, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Al-Fallujah school in the Jabaliya refugee camp on July 10. Israeli forces had surrounded the camp and issued displacement orders to residents. Burying his son in the area was too dangerous, so Hmaid carried his body to the Sheikh Radwan clinic to bury him in the courtyard.
“I wanted to bury him in Jabaliya. My son’s will was to be buried there. But the area was surrounded, so I buried him here—in this small patch of land,” Hmaid told Drop Site. “The occupation bulldozed the area, and this is what we found. As you can see… We don’t know where the graves are, or where the martyrs are.”
Dozens of other Palestinians were buried in shallow graves in the courtyard of the clinic for the same reason. Following the so-called “ceasefire” that went into effect last month and the partial withdrawal of Israeli troops, Palestinians in Gaza have been digging up bodies from the rubble and from temporary mass graves to identify them and give them a proper burial. On Tuesday, Civil Defense teams arrived at the Sheikh Radwan clinic to exhume what are believed to be more than 80 bodies hastily interred there amid Israel’s genocidal assault. ….more
