A father searches for his family's bones in rubble of Gaza's home

Crouching amid a pile of rubble that used to be his Gaza home, Mahmoud Hammad scoops dirt into a large sieve and shakes it, looking carefully before dumping it out.

- Associated Press

In recent days, he was lucky. Tiny bones appeared. He believes they belong to the unborn girl his pregnant wife was carrying when an Israeli airstrike hit the family's building more than two years ago, killing his wife and their five children.

He added the fragments to a box of bones he has collected during months of burrowing into the wreckage on his own, using picks, shovels and his hands. "I won't find them all," he said.

Some 8,000 people remain buried under the rubble of their homes destroyed by Israel's bombardment during its campaign against Hamas, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. While airstrikes and ground assaults raged, retrieving most was out of the question. But since a ceasefire deal in October, efforts to dig them out have increased, though hampered by the lack of heavy equipment.

Around 11:30am on Dec.6, 2023, an Israeli strike smashed into the six-story building where the families of Hammad and his brother lived in Gaza City's Sabra neighborhood.

The 39-year-old Hammad had just stepped out of the apartment to go upstairs as his wife Nema Hammad, who was nine months pregnant, and their five children, aged 8 to 16, were finishing breakfast.