Israel sent a truck with 88 decomposing bodies to Gaza on Wednesday, Sept. 25.
The Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement that it refused to accept the recent arrivals after the Israeli military delivered them without providing "their names, ages, genders, or the areas in which they were killed and kidnapped."
Health Ministry spokesperson Iyad Qadeeh said this was the fifth time that authorities have received a truckload of unidentified and decomposing corpses from Israel. The spokesperson added in an interview with the Middle East Eye that from this moment on, health officials will be refusing to accept any more bodies if they do not come with identifying information. (Related: Palestinian health ministry shares names of nearly 1,000 health workers killed by IDF in Gaza.)
"The Health Ministry halted the procedures to receive the container … until the completion of the full data and information about those bodies so their relatives can identify them," the ministry said in a statement.
The Gaza Media Office also reportedly told the driver of the truck to bring the bodies back to Israel.
"They must act according to the international humanitarian law and in a way that preserves the dignity of the martyrs and their families," said Media Office Director Ismail Al-Thawabta.
The last time Israel sent unidentified corpses to Gaza was on Aug. 2. Only two families were able to identify the bodies of their children at the time because most of the remains were returned as "bones and decomposed in an inhumane manner." The bodies were reportedly so decomposed that the remains of five people were put in a single coffin.
Thousands of Gazans still looking for missing remains of family members
Under international humanitarian law, those who have died during an armed conflict must be treated with dignity and be properly handled to guarantee that their remains do not go missing and unidentified.
"Whenever we hear about batches of bodies being delivered, we come to inspect them. Perhaps we will find them," said Gazan resident Sonia Aburjeila, who was among a group of people who gathered near the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis after Israel returned scores of unidentified and badly decomposed bodies to the bombed-out facility.
Aburjeila has yet to find the remains of her son and father, who went missing sometime during the past year.
Salwa Kurraz, who lost her son Marwan while they were fleeing Deir al-Balah to Gaza City, noted that she goes through the agonizing process of trying to identify him among the remains every time Israel returns bodies.
"We ask about him and try to find anything about him, but to no avail. We find nothing," Kurraz said. "His father always inspects the bodies that arrive unidentified. He was wearing brown pants, an indigo blue shirt, beige shoes and a black jacket, and he had his bicycle."
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Watch the video below about the IDF caught disposing of bodies during a West Bank raid.
This video is from the The Prisoner channel on Brighteon.com.
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