Searching for Gaza’s missing children

“We have been decimated,” Anas said of his family. “What was their crime, to be killed like this? None of them belonged to any faction or organization, and we weren’t targeted in any previous wars.”

Every day for the past seven months, 28-year-old Anas Juha and his surviving relatives have visited the ruins of their family home in the hope of finding the remains of their missing loved ones. On Dec. 6, a single Israeli airstrike crushed their five-story building in Gaza City’s Al-Fayoumi neighborhood, killing 117 members of the family. Fifty-seven bodies were recovered and identified; 60 others have remained trapped under the debris ever since.

By sheer coincidence, Anas had left his wife and children at home that morning while they ate breakfast to run an errand at his father’s house nearby. Upon hearing the powerful blast, he rushed back to check on his family and was horrified to find only a cloud of smoke and dust. “The whole building was reduced to rubble,” he told +972. “All I could think about was the 140 people who were inside.”

Anas began desperately searching for his family, together with his wounded cousins Mohammad and Naji, who had survived the strike after the force of the explosion propelled them out of the collapsing building. They conducted the initial search-and-rescue efforts alone, without the help of Gaza’s Civil Defense, which is tasked with locating survivors and martyrs after Israeli airstrikes; with internet and communication networks cut off across the Strip at the time, the survivors were unable to inform the emergency services of the attack. Ambulances arrived at the scene only after the first group of wounded people reached Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in private cars, and reported the location of the strike.

Anas’ wife, Lena, and their two children, 5-year-old Kariman and 3-year-old Fayez, were not among those pulled out of the rubble. Nor were Lena’s parents and siblings.

After grasping the magnitude of the tragedy that had befallen him, Anas began writing down the names of those whose bodies could not be retrieved. Initially, the shock was so severe that he couldn’t recall many of their names, including those of his wife and kids. But with time, he managed to note down all 60.

“We have been decimated,” Anas said of his family. “What was their crime, to be killed like this? None of them belonged to any faction or organization, and we weren’t targeted in any previous wars.”

The building where Anas Juha and his family lived, before and after an Israeli airstrike destroyed it and killed residents inside in December 2023, in Gaza City. (Courtesy of Anas Juha)

Despite the months that have passed since the bombing, Anas has not lost hope that he will one day be able to give his family a proper burial. For now, however, the Civil Defense cannot do more to help retrieve his relatives’ remains: their equipment is worn out, and they don’t have the personnel to cope with the scale of Israel’s bombardment, which is still ongoing.

“They are also busy responding to attacks where there may be survivors — they don’t have time for cases like ours,” Anas added. “Our hearts ache with anguish.”

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