DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — In photos, Wahiba Shabat immediately recognized her son’s body. A mother’s heart knows, she said. But when she finally saw his decomposed corpse, she wasn’t sure. Israel had handed over her son’s body naked, his hands tied behind his back with a zip tie. Scars around his ankles indicated […]
World
As Israel returns bodies, Palestinians face a grisly search through corpses for lost loved ones
Audio By Carbonatix
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — In photos, Wahiba Shabat immediately recognized her son’s body. A mother’s heart knows, she said. But when she finally saw his decomposed corpse, she wasn’t sure.
Israel had handed over her son’s body naked, his hands tied behind his back with a zip tie. Scars around his ankles indicated he’d been bound there too, Shabat said. His jaw was broken, with caked blood in his mouth. She had to feel around for a scar on the back of his head to confirm it was him.
The body of Mahmoud Shabat was among the remains of 195 Palestinians released by Israel over the past 10 days. Their handover is part of an ongoing exchange of the dead, as Hamas gradually returns the remains of 28 hostages under the Gaza ceasefire deal that also brought the release of all living hostages and some 2,000 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
Families flocked to Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, where the bodies were taken, trying to find out whether loved ones missing for much of the war are among them.
The Israeli military told The Associated Press that all bodies returned so far are those of combatants. AP couldn’t verify the claim, based on examining photos of bodies and speaking to doctors, experts and families. Several relatives who identified bodies, including Shabat’s, said they weren’t fighters.
Israel gave no identification for the bodies and doesn’t allow DNA testing material into Gaza. The bodies are heavily decomposed and damaged, and it’s up to families to recognize their loved ones. Some bodies show signs of possible abuse, including having been bound.
Israel’s military said it operates in accordance with international law. Under the ceasefire, Israel agreed to return 15 bodies for each body of a dead hostage.
Stephen Cordner, emeritus professor in forensic medicine at Australia’s Monash University, reviewed some of the photos of bodies and said some damage could be from the conditions the remains were kept in — for example, deep indentations could be caused by morgue surfaces where bodies were kept. But he said binding wrists behind the bodies “would be unusual” and called for a proper investigation.
“This represents an international forensic emergency,” he said.
Many of the bodies handed over appear to be fighters or others killed during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and following days, said Munir al-Bursh, a senior Gaza Health Ministry official.
Thousands of militants stormed across the border and attacked communities in southern Israel, triggering the war. Other Palestinians streamed in as well — to support the attack, to loot homes or out of curiosity after 16 years of largely being sealed inside Gaza. Shabat said her 34-year-old son Mahmoud was among those rushing in, and the family later reported him missing.
Thousands of families in Gaza are searching for loved ones missing during the war. Besides bodies from the Oct. 7 attack, Israel is believed to be holding remains of other Palestinians — dozens of them, including doctors — who died in Israeli custody after being detained from Gaza. Israeli troops also took hundreds of bodies exhumed from graves in their search for hostages.
No returned bodies are of those known to have died in detention, said al-Bursh, whose cousin, Adnan al-Bursh, one of Gaza’s best-known orthopedic surgeons, died in an Israeli prison in April 2024.
One family identified a body as that of a Palestinian who was driving to his laborer job in Israel on Oct. 7. He appears to have been shot in the head in his car, his family said. A photo of his body showed a bullet extracted from the remains.
Israel is expected to hand over another 200 bodies, Al-Bursh said. Hamas has returned the remains of 15 of 28 hostages.
Nasser Hospital has one of Gaza’s two remaining refrigerated, functioning morgues; the rest are unusable after Israeli strikes. The International Committee of the Red Cross provided several refrigerated trucks, said Dr. Ahmed Dhair, a senior forensic specialist at Nasser hospital.
Authorities take photos of each body, posting them on the Health Ministry’s website for families to search. Because there’s no reliable internet connection for most people in Gaza, officials also show the pictures in a shed at the hospital’s courtyard, where families sit in a canopied makeshift hall and watch.
Most bodies seem unrecognizable, covered in mud, blood or ice from months in Israeli morgues. On some, eyes are missing. On others, the face is smashed or seems even blank, with features seemingly erased or smeared away. Some bodies are naked. Photos focus on scars, birthmarks, or distinctive clothing or shoes that relatives might recognize.
“How can mothers, fathers or any family member remember what their relative was wearing two years ago?” said Ahmed Massoud, spokesperson for the Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared, which collaborates with the Health Ministry.
Dhair said Israel sent almost no information with the bodies. He said more than 150 remains had Israeli serial numbers with the letters “ST,” which officials said might indicate they were held at the morgue of Sde Teiman, a military prison camp in southern Israel. Israeli authorities didn’t reply to questions about the coding.
Four forensic teams examine the bodies, he said, but they have little means to firmly determine causes of death. Some cases showed evidence of gunshots to the head or chest, Dhair said.
AP reviewed photos of 162 bodies. At least 49 appeared to be in military garb, signaling they were likely militants.
At least 13 have hands or feet bound in zip ties or handcuffs, visible signs on their wrists or ankles that they’d been bound, or clothes that may have been used as blindfolds or gags. One body had a colostomy bag; another had a medical tube in his arm, suggesting he might have been in a hospital shortly before death.
For two years, 62-year-old Shabat and her husband were unsure of the fate of their son, Mahmoud, who worked as a muezzin at a mosque, performing the call to prayer, and played on the local soccer team. Excited when the Oct. 7 attack began, he rushed from their home in Beit Hanoun, the closest Gaza town to the border, and into Israel, Shabat said.
When the bodies were released, Shabat and her husband rushed to Nasser Hospital. Searching through online photos, Shabat believed she found Mahmoud. But the “features looked tortured,” she said. She needed to see the body to be sure.
His body was frozen, the skin reddened. As she ran her fingers over his skull to find his scar, she burst into tears and screamed: “It is Mahmoud! It is my son!”
Three days after identifying the body, the family buried Mahmoud.
“Thank God, I now buried my son,” Shabat said. “May God comfort every mother and let her know where her children are.”
Shaimaa Abu Awda got no such relief. She goes to Nasser Hospital every day, looking for signs of 16-year-old son Rayan. He was on his way to school as the Oct. 7 attack happened. Witnesses saw him enter Israel with other bystanders.
“He is a child, not a fighter,” Abu Awda said. “If he has been killed, it’s God’s will. … But I want at least to find his body to bury him, like the rest of those people.”
___
El Deeb reported from Cairo. AP correspondent Lee Keath in Cairo contributed.