KHAN YUNIS, Palestinian Territories: The bodies of dozens of unidentified people were buried on Wednesday in a mass grave at a cemetery in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
Wrapped in blue tarpaulin, the bodies were lowered on stretchers, some of them stained with blood, into a sandy pit that was gradually enlarged by a digger. Some were the size of children.
“As these martyrs had no one to say goodbye to, we dug a mass grave to bury them. They are unknown martyrs,” Bassem Dababesh of the emergency committee at the religious affairs ministry told AFP.
The remains, which bore only numbers, had come from the Indonesian and Al-Shifa hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, according to members of the committee at the burial site.
The Indonesian hospital on the edge of the Jabalia refugee camp, which had been hit by Israeli air strikes, was partly evacuated on Monday, said Ashraf Al-Qudra, spokesman for the Hamas-controlled health ministry.
“There were bodies everywhere. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it,” said Umm Mohammed Al-Ran, a woman evacuated from the Indonesian hospital toward Rafah in the south.
“Wounded people died in front of us as they bled out,” she told AFP.
“The stench of death was everywhere in the hospital. The wounded were crying out for painkillers, but the doctors didn’t have any to give them.”
She held up her phone to show a video she had taken. It showed worms crawling from the infected wound on a patient’s leg.
It’s a similar situation at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, the territory’s largest.
On November 14, that hospital’s director Mohammad Abu Salmiya said 179 bodies had been buried in a mass grave inside the complex.
Among them were seven premature babies who died because there was no electricity to power their incubators.
The bodies that arrived at Khan Yunis on Wednesday would have been “detained” by Israel before being released after representations from “third countries and the United Nations,” according to the emergency committee at the religious affairs ministry.
Khalil Siam, director of a transport company, told AFP that the bodies had arrived the night before, and it was not known “if they’re decomposing or not.”
AFP contacted the Israeli military and several UN agencies operating in Gaza, but no reply had been received late Wednesday.
There are thousands of dead in the Gaza Strip, and the question of burials has shocked many Gazans.
Since the war began, war dead have been buried hastily in private plots of land and even a football field, when cemeteries are full or inaccessible because of the fighting.
A week after the war began, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said there was a shortage of body bags.
“Every story coming out of Gaza is about survival, despair and loss,” he said.
The war began on October 7 after Hamas launched the worst attack in Israel’s history that left around 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli government.
Hamas also seized 240 hostages.
Israel launched a major bombing campaign and then a ground offensive in Gaza which, according to the Hamas government, has killed 14,100 people, thousands of them children.
Thousands of dead are also believed to be buried under the rubble.
In Gaza, dozens of unidentified bodies buried in ‘mass grave’
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In Gaza, dozens of unidentified bodies buried in ‘mass grave’
- Since the war began, war dead have been buried hastily in private plots of land and even a football field, when cemeteries are full or inaccessible because of the fighting
Syrian army pushes into Aleppo district after Kurdish groups reject withdrawal
- Two Syrian security officials told Reuters the ceasefire efforts had failed and that the army would seize the neighborhood by force
ALEPPO, Syria: The Syrian army said it would push into the last Kurdish-held district of Aleppo city on Friday after Kurdish groups there rejected a government demand for their fighters to withdraw under a ceasefire deal.
The violence in Aleppo has brought into focus one of the main faultlines in Syria as the country tries to rebuild after a devastating war, with Kurdish forces resisting efforts by President Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s Islamist-led government to bring their fighters under centralized authority.
At least nine civilians have been killed and more than 140,000 have fled their homes in Aleppo, where Kurdish forces are trying to cling on to several neighborhoods they have run since the early days of the war, which began in 2011.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Standoff pits government against Kurdish forces
• Sharaa says Kurds are ‘fundamental’ part of Syria
• More than 140,000 have fled homes due to unrest
• Turkish, Syrian foreign ministers discuss Aleppo by phone
ِA ceasefire was announced by the defense ministry overnight, demanding the withdrawal of Kurdish forces to the Kurdish-held northeast. That would effectively end Kurdish control over the pockets of Aleppo that Kurdish forces have held.
CEASEFIRE ‘FAILED,’ SECURITY OFFICIALS SAY
But in a statement, Kurdish councils that run Aleppo’s Sheikh Maksoud and Ashrafiyah districts said calls to leave were “a call to surrender” and that Kurdish forces would instead “defend their neighborhoods,” accusing government forces of intensive shelling.
Hours later, the Syrian army said that the deadline for Kurdish fighters to withdraw had expired, and that it would begin a military operation to clear the last Kurdish-held neighborhood of Sheikh Maksoud.
Two Syrian security officials told Reuters the ceasefire efforts had failed and that the army would seize the neighborhood by force.
The Syrian defense ministry had earlier carried out strikes on parts of Sheikh Maksoud that it said were being used by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to launch attacks on the “people of Aleppo.” It said on Friday that SDF strikes had killed three army soldiers.
Kurdish security forces in Aleppo said some of the strikes hit a hospital, calling it a war crime. The defense ministry disputed that, saying the structure was a large arms depot and that it had been destroyed in the resumption of strikes on Friday.
It posted an aerial video that it said showed the location after the strikes, and said secondary explosions were visible, proving it was a weapons cache.
Reuters could not immediately verify the claim.
The SDF is a powerful Kurdish-led security force that controls northeastern Syria. It says it withdrew its fighters from Aleppo last year, leaving Kurdish neighborhoods in the hands of the Kurdish Asayish police.
Under an agreement with Damascus last March the SDF was due to integrate with the defense ministry by the end of 2025, but there has been little progress.
FRANCE, US SEEK DE-ESCALATION
France’s foreign ministry said it was working with the United States to de-escalate.
A ministry statement said President Emmanuel Macron had urged Sharaa on Thursday “to exercise restraint and reiterated France’s commitment to a united Syria where all segments of Syrian society are represented and protected.”
A Western diplomat told Reuters that mediation efforts were focused on calming the situation and producing a deal that would see Kurdish forces leave Aleppo and provide security guarantees for Kurds who remained.
The diplomat said US envoy Tom Barrack was en route to Damascus. A spokesperson for Barrack declined to comment. Washington has been closely involved in efforts to promote integration between the SDF — which has long enjoyed US military support — and Damascus, with which the United States has developed close ties under President Donald Trump.
The ceasefire declared by the government overnight said Kurdish forces should withdraw by 9 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Friday, but no one withdrew overnight, Syrian security sources said.
Barrack had welcomed what he called a “temporary ceasefire” and said Washington was working intensively to extend it beyond the 9 a.m. deadline. “We are hopeful this weekend will bring a more enduring calm and deeper dialogue,” he wrote on X.
TURKISH WARNING
Turkiye views the SDF as a terrorist organization linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party and has warned of military action if it does not honor the integration agreement.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, speaking on Thursday, expressed hope that the situation in Aleppo would be normalized “through the withdrawal of SDF elements.”
Though Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda commander who belongs to the Sunni Muslim majority, has repeatedly vowed to protect minorities, bouts of violence in which government-aligned fighters have killed hundreds of Alawites and Druze have spread alarm in minority communities over the last year.
The Kurdish councils in Aleppo said Damascus could not be trusted “with our security and our neighborhoods,” and that attacks on the areas aimed to bring about displacement.
Sharaa, in a phone call with Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani on Friday, affirmed that the Kurds were “a fundamental part of the Syrian national fabric,” the Syrian presidency said.
Neither the government nor the Kurdish forces have announced a toll of casualties among their fighters from the recent clashes.
