Kathmandu— Civil defence crews recovered 19 bodies from the wreckage of a destroyed residential building in Gaza City on Saturday, with the majority of the deceased identified as women and children. The operation, which took four days to complete at the Karam building in the western part of the city, marks the latest in a slow and grueling manual effort to retrieve victims from beneath the debris of recent strikes.

Challenges in Recovery Operations

The search for victims has been severely limited by a chronic shortage of heavy machinery required to shift large concrete slabs. Consequently, civil defence crews and specialised medics have been forced to rely on rudimentary tools and exhausting manual labour to clear the ruins.

Mohammed Abu Dan, who oversees the recovery efforts, stated that work at the Karam building concluded after four consecutive days of searching. He noted that crews will now relocate to a new site within Gaza City to continue search operations.

Scale of Human Toll

The scale of the humanitarian crisis remains immense, with Gaza’s Health Ministry reporting that more than 8,000 people remain missing under rubble across the territory.

Since a ceasefire took hold on October 11 last year, the ministry has recorded at least 1,254 deaths, 4,121 injuries, and 804 bodies recovered from wreckage. The total death toll since October 2023 has surpassed 73,300, with more than 174,000 people wounded.

Recent Mass Funerals

The recent recovery at the Karam building follows other large-scale efforts to identify the dead. On Tuesday, a mass funeral was held in Gaza City for 112 members of the Abu Sharia and al-Hasayna families.

Those remains had been pulled from the wreckage of a residential block in the Sabra neighbourhood, which was destroyed during an Israeli strike in November 2023.

Specialised medics and civil defence crews are preparing to move to a new location to resume search operations.

(With inputs from Al Jazeera)

Originally published on abcnews.com.np.