Gaza’s shadow death toll: bodies buried beneath the rubble

A curly-haired young man shakes as he bends over the mound of smashed concrete that used to be his friend’s home. He clutches his rain-spotted iPhone in his trembling hands, but there is no answer.

A father crawls over a mountain of gray concrete shards, his right ear pressed to the dust. “I can’t hear you, love,” he tells his absent children in a different video shared on Instagram and verified by The New York Times.

The Gaza Strip has become a 140-square-mile graveyard, each destroyed building another jagged tomb for those still buried within.

The most recent health ministry estimate for the number of people missing in Gaza is about 7,000. But that figure has not been updated since November. Gaza and aid officials say thousands more have most likely been added to that toll since then.

Some were buried too hastily to be counted. Others lie decomposing in the open or have simply disappeared amid the fighting. The rest, in all likelihood, remain trapped under the rubble.

The piles of debris have been multiplying ever since Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and Israel launched its retaliatory war.

In videos like the ones described above, the searchers can be seen clambering over and onto the wreckage of homes and buildings to dig.

But hopes dwindle quickly. The people they are looking for are usually found dead beneath the wreckage.

The buried make up a shadow death toll in Gaza, a leaden asterisk to the health ministry’s official tally of more than 31,000 dead.

Across all of Gaza, Ahmed Abu Shehab, a civil defense worker in the territory, is aware of only two excavators available for the task. Without them, rescuers rely on shovels, drills and their own hands.

Calling 101, the Gaza equivalent of 911, is of little use: Communications networks are weak, erratic or nonfunctional. Even if they do get through, the lack of fuel and the continuing attacks mean ambulances and rescue workers are hard-pressed to move around Gaza to answer their pleas.

Palestinian Red Crescent Society teams have been unable to enter parts of the strip freely, said Nebal Fesakh, a spokesperson for the group. There is nothing they can do to respond to 101 calls from people trapped there or to treat the wounded, take away a body or dig for the missing.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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