Gaza Families Bury 105 Palestinians Pulled From One Bombed Residential Block Nearly Three Years Later

Grieving families across Gaza City are finally laying their loved ones to rest in long-delayed funerals after rescue crews recovered 105 bodies and human remains from a flattened residential block in the Yarmouk Square neighbourhood following a gruelling 17-day search.

The landmark recovery operation, carried out in coordination with an Egyptian committee, concluded on Thursday, 1 October 2026, nearly three years after Israeli air strikes involving at least twenty bombs levelled the seven-storey Al Taj 3 building on 25 October 2023.

Among the victims pulled from the ruins were 37 members of Osama Sharaf's family, including both of his parents and all of his siblings, ending years of agonising uncertainty.

Civil defence officials report that over 8,000 individuals remain missing beneath rubble across the enclave, underscoring the immense humanitarian toll of ongoing hostilities.

As shrouded coffins are carried toward the Sheikh Radwan cemetery, the harrowing recovery operation exposes the enduring devastation left in the wake of the war's earliest bombardments.

Twenty Bombs on a Single Afternoon

The victims were killed on the afternoon of 25 October 2023. A series of Israeli air strikes involving at least 20 bombs levelled the seven-storey Al Taj 3 building and destroyed several other residential buildings around it, according to Al Jazeera, in the first weeks of the war.

Rescue teams could not reach the dead at the time. Abdul al-Majdalawi, the civil defence's director of operations, said it had been impossible to reach the bodies when the buildings collapsed, and said bulldozers, excavators and other heavy machinery used by civil defence teams were directly and deliberately targeted.

The toll from the strike has long been uncertain. Fawaz Ziyara, a survivor and a relative of victims, said around 300 people were killed when the block was struck and that more bodies and missing people remain beneath the rubble, a figure that has not been independently confirmed.

The monitoring group Airwars, which documented the strike, recorded how early casualty figures shifted while people remained trapped, with initial reports of 120 killed and 300 missing.

Thirty-Seven Members of One Family

For some families, the recovery completed a search that began in the war's first days. 'We recovered some of them at the beginning of the war, and today 16 more were recovered, including my father, my mother, and all of my siblings,' Sharaf told Al Jazeera. 'My sister's son was also there with them.'

Others had spent nearly three years with nothing to bury. Taghreed Al-Hanawi lost her daughter, the physician Alia Ramzi Al-Hanawi, along with her son-in-law and four grandchildren.

'Today the wound has reopened, but at last I was able to hold their remains and bury them with dignity,' she told the Anadolu news agency.

Relatives gathered at the site in the Al Taj area to identify and say goodbye to their dead as rescue crews laid the shrouded remains in rows among the ruins. A memorial ceremony was held on Wednesday, the day before the burial.

The civil defence framed the recovery as a statement about who had died. 'These are civilians and human beings who have the full right to live in peace and safety,' spokesman Mahmoud Basal said, renewing calls for civilians in Gaza to be protected.

More Than 8,000 Still Missing Under the Rubble

This was not a one-off. Al Jazeera's correspondent in Gaza City, Ibrahim Khalili, said the operation was the fifth largest of its kind since the war began in terms of the number of bodies recovered.

Gaza's civil defence recovered more than 630 bodies and other human remains between November 2025 and September 2026, according to figures cited by the UN human rights chief, Volker Türk.

The work that remains is far larger. More than 8,000 people are estimated to be missing under the rubble in Gaza, according to the same figures, and for many of their families the kind of burial taking place in Sheikh Radwan this week is still out of reach.

The reports on the recovery did not include an Israeli military account of the October 2023 strikes on Yarmouk Square.

Nearly three years after the bombs fell, the families of the Al Taj 3 building are holding the funerals they could not hold then. While families at Sheikh Radwan finally managed to bury their dead, thousands of other households continue waiting for the chance to begin their own mournful farewells.