Gaza buries 112 recovered from 2023 Sabra strike
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- Thousands of mourners in Gaza City on Tuesday buried 112 members of the Abu Sharia and al-Hasayna families, whose bodies had remained trapped in rubble since the November 22, 2023 Israeli strike on the Sabra neighbourhood.
- The November 22, 2023 strike killed 308 members of the two families in total — including 40 children, 30 women, and seven people with disabilities — according to Palestinian officials cited in the report.
- Palestinian authorities say roughly 157 people from the two families remain missing, and Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor chairman Ramy Abdu estimated around 200 more Abu Sharia members may still be buried beneath rubble, possibly decomposed.
- Palestinian Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal called the funeral one of the largest held during the war, describing it as an "exceptional and painful scene," while Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian National Initiative said it could be "the largest funeral in Palestinian history."
- Palestinian researcher Mahmoud Hamed al-Aila said Gaza was "extracting the bodies of its children from under the rubble after years of genocide," while activist Ali Abo Rezeq noted some families searched through rubble with bare hands due to shortages of heavy equipment.
- Since the October ceasefire was signed, continued Israeli strikes have killed at least 1,250 Palestinians and injured 4,110 others as of Monday; the broader war has killed at least 73,375 and wounded 174,220 since October 2023, with about 90% of Gaza's infrastructure damaged or destroyed.
- The Assembly of Palestinian Clans and Families called on the Western-backed Board of Peace to accelerate body recovery, debris clearance, and Gaza reconstruction, emphasizing that the burial ended the long wait for some families but not for thousands of others still missing.
Why it matters: Two families lost 308 members in a single November 2023 strike, and roughly 157 of them are still unaccounted for nearly three years later — exposing a body-recovery and reconstruction gap the Assembly of Palestinian Clans and Families has now formally pushed onto the Board of Peace. With Israeli strikes killing at least 1,250 more Palestinians since the October ceasefire was signed, the funeral doubles as evidence that the agreement has not paused the war.
