Gaza crews recover 19 bodies from rubble of destroyed residential building

Civil defence crews in Gaza City have recovered 19 bodies from the rubble of the destroyed Karam residential building after four days of searching. Most of the dead were women and children, according to the civil defence statement cited in the supplied material. The recovery ended on Saturday in the western part of the city, where teams had been working through broken concrete and debris.

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Mohammed Abu Dan, who oversees recovery efforts, said the search at the Karam building had concluded after four consecutive days. He said specialised medics and civil defence crews would now move to another site elsewhere in Gaza City to continue search operations. The supplied material says the work is being carried out largely by hand because of a shortage of heavy machinery.

The recovery effort is part of a wider effort across Gaza to find people still missing under rubble. Gaza's Health Ministry says more than 8,000 people remain missing beneath debris across the territory. The same material says crews are using rudimentary tools and exhausting manual labour because they do not have the equipment needed to shift large concrete slabs left behind by strikes.

The incident highlights the scale of the humanitarian and recovery challenge in Gaza, where destroyed residential buildings continue to be searched long after the original strikes. The lack of heavy machinery is slowing the retrieval of bodies and complicating efforts to account for the missing. It also means that recovery teams are working in conditions that are physically demanding and slow, with limited capacity to clear collapsed structures quickly.

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The supplied material places this recovery within a broader pattern of post-strike search operations. It says that since the ceasefire took hold on 11 October last year, at least 1,254 people have been killed, 4,121 wounded and 804 bodies recovered from rubble, according to the ministry's latest count. It also says the overall death toll since October 2023 stands at more than 73,300, with more than 174,000 wounded.

The same report notes that a mass funeral was held in Gaza City on Tuesday for 112 people from the Abu Sharia and al-Hasayna families, whose remains were pulled from the wreckage of a residential block in the Sabra neighbourhood. What remains unclear is how many more bodies may still be under the Karam building site or elsewhere in Gaza City. The next step, according to the civil defence official quoted in the material, is for teams to continue searching at a new location in the city.

The broader outlook depends on whether more equipment becomes available and whether recovery crews can keep moving through the territory's damaged neighbourhoods.

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