Gaza City, Gaza Strip \u2013<\/strong> With exhausted steps and eyes filled with tears, Hanaa al-Mabhuh moves between the hall displaying photographs of bodies and the morgue at al-Shifa Hospital in a grim search for any trace of her missing son.<\/p>\n The 56-year-old mother wipes away tears with the back of her hand and stares at the decomposed faces on the screen, torn between the desire to find out what happened to her youngest child, while at the same time fearing he might be among the dead handed over by Israel under a US-brokered ceasefire deal.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Thousands of Palestinians from Gaza have been seeking information on loved ones who went missing since the war began after the deadly October 7, 2023 raid by Hamas.<\/p>\n Driven by her need for closure, Hanaa returns to scan the images on the screens one more time.<\/p>\n \u201cThis boy is a piece of me,\u201d Hanaa tells Al Jazeera, referring to 18-year-old Omar, who disappeared along with one of his cousins, Alaa, when they went to inspect the ruins of their home in Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza last June. Omar, a high school student, was the youngest among his seven siblings.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery child is precious to his family, but my son is a part of me,\u201d she adds, tears streaming down her cheeks as she walks toward the morgue.<\/p>\n The family contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and several human rights organisations to try to find out what happened to Omar and his cousin, but to no avail.<\/p>\n Hanaa says the wait has been heartbreaking.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do not know whether they are prisoners, or whether they [the Israelis] killed them and took their bodies or detained their bodies along with those bodies they release in batches.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are running as if in a mirage and we do not know anything,\u201d says Hanaa, falling silent as if trying to catch her breath.<\/p>\n Since Israel began returning Palestinian bodies to Gaza through the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing, Hanaa has become one of hundreds of family members moving between hospitals and reception points seeking any clues to the fate of their loved ones.<\/p>\n The latest batch of bodies came on February 4. Gaza\u2019s Health Ministry said 54 bodies and 66 boxes containing human remains, released by Israel via the ICRC, had been received.<\/p>\n The remains arrived at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, where medical and technical teams began initial examinations and documentation before presenting them to families for possible identification.<\/p>\n Human rights organisations say handovers occur through the Red Cross in accordance with international rules, but these procedures do not always include detailed documentation or the circumstances of death, increasing the burden on Gaza authorities to classify bodies and attempt identification amid limited capacity to conduct DNA testing.<\/p>\n Since the latest handover, Hanaa has gone to the hospital several times to review lists and photographs of the bodies.<\/p>\n \u201cI have not left any place without going to it. I even went to Khan Younis in the south of the Strip to check the photos,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The bodies were returned under the United States-brokered October 2025 truce agreement between Israel and Hamas, which stipulated that the remains of 15 Palestinians would be exchanged for the bodies of every Israeli held in Gaza.<\/p>\n As of last month, Israeli authorities continue to hold the bodies of more than 770 Palestinians in what is known as the \u201ccemeteries of numbers and morgues\u201c, according to the National Campaign for the Recovery of Martyrs\u2019 Bodies and Disclosing the Fate of the Missing.<\/p>\n Hanaa\u2019s suffering does not stop at reviewing Palestinian bodies. She also checks the lists of prisoners released by Israel from time to time, contacting the ICRC to try to confirm if her son\u2019s name appears.<\/p>\n \u201cBy God, the Red Cross has memorised me and my voice from how much I call and ask. They tell me: \u2018Sister, aren\u2019t you the one who called last time?\u2019 I tell him: \u2018Yes, my brother. Forgive me, it is not in my hands.\u2019 He sympathises with me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Despite the gruelling effort, there is still no decisive answer about her son\u2019s fate.<\/p>\n \u201cMy heart as a mother wishes that my son is alive. But I prepare myself for the worst possibilities, and even this psychological preparation has brought no result,\u201d Hanaa says.<\/p>\n Hanaa says the hardest part is not only the loss, but the state of confusion and disorientation she lives through, along with hundreds of members of other families still searching for their relatives.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy do they leave us lost like this? We don\u2019t know where they went or what their fate is,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Another grim aspect is witnessing the \u201cpitiful condition\u201d in which the bodies are returned by Israel\u2019s military. \u201cAll the features are completely buried, and I cannot even distinguish my son\u2019s features.\u201d<\/p>\n Hanaa says she believes the mutilation is \u201cdeliberate\u201d to increase the pain of Palestinian families. \u201cIt is as if they want to leave us in grief for a lifetime \u2026 to mourn our children without end,\u201d she says, tears unceasing.<\/p>\n \u201cMy son was in the prime of his youth, like a flower, when he was lost. He was preparing to sit for his high school exams with his cousin. What did they do to disappear like this and for us not to know their fate until now?\u201d<\/p>\n Since the war began in October 2023, the fate of bodies held by Israel has emerged as a central humanitarian and legal issue in the conflict. Israel does not publish a unified list of named bodies it holds.<\/p>\n According to a statement by the Red Cross, it has \u201cfacilitated the transfer of 360 Palestinian bodies to Gaza since October 2023\u201d, supported the handover of 195 Israeli captives, including 35 deceased, and the return of 3,472 Palestinian prisoners alive.<\/p>\n Only 99 returned Palestinian bodies have been definitively identified, according to the Health Ministry. The rest remain unidentified or are still undergoing identification procedures.<\/p>\n The ministry said some corpses show gunshot wounds to the head and chest, shrapnel injuries, fractures to the skull and limbs, in addition to advanced decomposition \u2013 greatly complicating forensic identification.<\/p>\n Hanaa called on international organisations to intervene to assist grieving families such as hers to determine the fate of their children.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot calm down or stabilise psychologically or socially. We are under enormous psychological pressure,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cThey plowed the earth completely and exhumed graves searching for Israeli bodies with equipment and tests. But our children, no one asks about them. By what logic does this happen?\u201d<\/p>\n At Gaza\u2019s forensic department, a small team handles this heavy burden under conditions that exclude tools of \u201cdefinitive confirmation\u201d, leaving staff and families in a wide space of doubt.<\/p>\n Ahmed Abu Taha, head of the bodies and missing persons files at the Health Ministry, tells Al Jazeera that 120 corpses recently arrived in Gaza via the ICRC. Some came complete, while others were simply bone fragments and other human remains.<\/span><\/p>\n Out of the 120, only two bodies were identified, and even those were not scientifically conclusive.<\/p>\n \u201cConfirmatory\u201d tests such as DNA analysis, forensic anthropology, and forensic odontology are unavailable in Gaza\u2019s destroyed healthcare system, meaning only \u201cpresumptive\u201d testing can be conducted, which is less precise, says Abu Taha.<\/p>\n \u201cThe steps begin with presumptive testing \u2013 looking at distinguishing marks, clothes, whether male or female, estimating age, identifying distinguishing features such as amputations or tattoos\u2026 Then you move to confirmatory testing. But unfortunately, in Gaza we only have presumptive testing.\u201d<\/p>\n This type of testing \u201cis prone to many errors\u201d including misidentification, he adds.<\/p>\n The most painful aspect, Abu Taha says, is the impact an \u201cerror\u201d has on families waiting desperately to find the body of a missing child.\u00a0Repeated misidentifications have been recorded, causing shock and reopening wounds for many Palestinians.<\/p>\n Abu Taha recounts one story that deeply affected him and illustrates the psychological and emotional damage inflicted on families amid the absence of accurate DNA tests.<\/p>\n \u201cOn one occasion, members of a family came and identified a body as their son. They presented evidence that closely matched the body. The forensic team examined it and found similarities, and indeed the body was handed over to that family.\u201d<\/p>\n Grieving relatives completed the formal procedures for receiving the body, obtained a death certificate, then proceeded with funeral rites and burial. They announced a wake to receive mourners.<\/p>\n But a shock came when, only two days after the burial, another family presented more conclusive evidence that showed the deceased person belonged to them.<\/p>\n Abu Taha says the harrowing incident has been repeated inside Gaza\u2019s beleaguered hospitals.<\/p>\n He is calling for international intervention to pressure Israel to allow the entry of identification equipment and DNA testing tools as an ethical and humanitarian matter to end the suffering of families struggling to identify loved ones and give them a proper burial.<\/p>\n \u201cThe file of the bodies is not merely a numerical issue,\u201d Abu Taha says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gaza City, Gaza Strip \u2013 With exhausted steps and eyes filled with tears, Hanaa al-Mabhuh moves between the hall displaying photographs of bodies and the morgue at al-Shifa Hospital in a grim search for any trace of her missing son. The 56-year-old mother wipes away tears with the back of her hand and stares at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
![\"INTERACTIVE-GAZA](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Death-toll-tracker-1771169520.png?quality=80\"){kind=tracking}
<\/p>\n
<\/strong>Endless search<\/h2>\n\u2018Why do they leave us lost?\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\""Every](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/873A9714-1771164810.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
Appeal for international help<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"INTERACTIVE](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/INTERACTIVE-GAZA-HEALTHCARE-SYSTEM-FEB-3-2026-1770124823.png?quality=80\")
<\/p>\nWhen error becomes tragedy<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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