Editor’s Note: This story incorporates disturbing pictures.
Missing in Gaza: NCS investigation factors to the Israeli navy bulldozing the useless our bodies of Palestinians searching for aid
Jerusalem
—
Ammar Wadi knew he was risking his life when he got down to get a bag of flour for his household from an aid truck close to the Zikim crossing into Gaza in June.
“Forgive me mom if anything happens to me,” he wrote on his cellphone’s house display. “Whoever finds my phone, please tell my family that I love them so much.”
Amid common Israeli gunfire towards aid seekers this summer season, Wadi by no means made it house and the message he left was delivered to his household weeks later by somebody who discovered his cellphone. It was the final they heard from him.
Wadi is amongst the dozens of Palestinians whose family members say they vanished close to Zikim and whose fates stay unknown.
A NCS investigation now factors to the Israeli navy bulldozing the our bodies of some of these killed close to the crossing into shallow, unmarked graves. At different occasions, their stays had been merely left to decompose in the open, unable to be recovered in the militarized space.
The apply of mishandling our bodies by bulldozing them into unmarked graves can violate worldwide legislation, based on authorized consultants.
NCS’s evaluation, which additionally discovered that aid seekers had been killed by indiscriminate Israeli fireplace close to the crossing, drew upon a whole bunch of movies and images from round Zikim, together with interviews of eyewitnesses and native aid truck drivers.
Satellite imagery additionally exhibits bulldozing exercise all through the summer season in the areas the place aid seekers had been killed. Two movies, geolocated by NCS to the Zikim space, present the aftermath of an incident in June, depicting our bodies partially buried round an overturned aid truck.
NCS spoke with two former Israeli navy members who described situations elsewhere in Gaza throughout the warfare through which the our bodies of Palestinians had been bulldozed into shallow graves. They requested anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to talk on the matter.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) denied that it used bulldozers to “remove” our bodies, however didn’t tackle whether or not they had been used to bury them. The IDF advised NCS the presence of bulldozers round Zikim was a “routine matter” used for operational functions, similar to coping with explosive threats or “routine engineering needs.”
According to worldwide legislation, the warring sides ought to cooperate in burying the useless in a approach that enables them to be recognized, mentioned Janina Dill, co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.
“The purpose is to prevent the dead from becoming the missing and to allow for memorialization, chiefly by their families,” Dill mentioned. “Moreover, if bodies are deliberately mutilated or mishandled in a way that violates their dignity, this can amount to ‘outrages upon personal dignity’ which is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.”
Whether the IDF tracks websites the place it has allegedly buried our bodies stays an open query, nevertheless. One of the IDF whistleblowers advised NCS that when his unit buried 9 individuals in early 2024, the location of the grave was left unmarked. The IDF didn’t reply to NCS’s query about this incident.
Nearly six months after Wadi’s disappearance, his household continues to be with out solutions. Instead of discovering consolation in his remaining cellphone message, nevertheless, Wadi’s mom, Nawal Musleh, is haunted by what she could by no means uncover.
“When he comes to my mind, my eyes just cannot stop crying,” she advised NCS. “We accept whatever God has written for us, but we just want to know what happened to our son.”
A pair of graphic movies posted to social media from September 11 – reviewed and geolocated by NCS – present a gradual stream of Palestinians fleeing from the Zikim space hauling sacks of flour underneath a barrage of gunfire.
At least one particular person carrying flour seems to be shot from behind in the footage, with the gunfire seeming to return from the route of an IDF place that NCS has recognized in satellite tv for pc imagery.
Robert Maher of Montana State University, an audio forensics professional, analyzed the movies for NCS and discovered the photographs originated round 340 meters (1,115 ft) from the filming location, which corresponds to the distance from the IDF place.
In the different video, a bunch may also be seen tending to the our bodies of one apparently useless and one other severely injured particular person, earlier than carrying them away. Meanwhile, the gunfire continues.
In an announcement to NCS, the IDF mentioned it “does not intentionally shoot at innocent civilians” and in situations the place a risk arises, “fire is carried out for warning purposes or to neutralize the threat.”
Other footage and images reviewed by NCS present a number of corpses that might not be retrieved from Zikim by different aid seekers or the civil protection resulting from the harmful situations.
On June 15, two eyewitnesses advised NCS that one aid truck touring from the crossing was swarmed by a crowd of hungry Palestinians. The aid vehicles are operated by personal native contractors in Gaza to select up provides from the crossing and drive them into the strip.
Shortly after the aid truck was surrounded, the Israeli navy opened fireplace towards the automobile, with many individuals showing to have been shot and collapsing beneath the truck, the eyewitnesses mentioned.
An ambulance operated by civil protection staff was permitted to entry the space a number of days later.
“We were shocked by the scene,” one of the civil protection staff advised NCS, who requested to not be named out of concern for his security. “The (bodies) we recovered were decomposed – they had clearly been there for a while, there were signs that dogs had eaten parts of them.”
Videos obtained and geolocated by NCS to that location in Zikim present a crushed, overturned aid truck amid a pile of particles. Several decomposing our bodies are scattered round the automobile, partially buried in mounds of sand. A stray canine is seen close by.
The civil protection group was solely capable of retrieve 15 our bodies and, with the ambulance full, roughly 20 had been by no means recovered, based on the employee. The IDF didn’t reply to questions on this incident.
A half dozen native aid truck drivers who labored the Zikim route spoke to NCS on the situation of anonymity resulting from fears for his or her security.
They described scenes of strewn and decomposing our bodies as a typical sight, with Israeli bulldozers at occasions clearing the corpses into the sand.
“I see dead people every time I drive through Zikim… I watched Israeli bulldozers bury the dead bodies,” one driver mentioned. “If you passed through that area in July, you wouldn’t miss it; I kept my windows closed.”
“Israeli army bulldozers either bury them or cover them with dirt,” one other driver mentioned.
Satellite imagery and images add to those testimonies, capturing a standing presence of Israeli bulldozers from late July to early August. Signs of bulldozer exercise round the Zikim crossing are obvious starting in mid-June, simply after the aid route opened, till September 12, when it closed.
Some of the bulldozer exercise seems associated to clearing the aid route, which was ceaselessly affected by containers and particles.
At different occasions, satellite tv for pc imagery exhibits bulldozing exercise with out a clear objective, similar to when a bulldozer pushed a 30-square-meter (322-square-foot) space of soil into a brief pile in mid-June, round 400 meters (1,300 ft) away from the place the overturned truck attended to by civil protection staff was discovered days earlier.
The bulldozers had been additionally repeatedly used to demolish the ruins of buildings behind which aid seekers beforehand sought shelter from Israeli gunfire, as seen in quite a few movies.
Two eyewitnesses advised NCS that on September 7 – as individuals went looking close to Zikim for any signal of their missing relations – they got here throughout what they are saying seemed to be bulldozed corpses.
“I found the bodies there bulldozed along with the cardboard (aid) boxes… they pile them on top of each other,” Adel Mansour advised NCS, one of the eyewitnesses who went in search of his 17-year-old son.
One aid truck driver who labored the Zikim routes advised NCS: “It’s like the Bermuda Triangle; no one knows what’s happening in that area, and it seems no one ever will.”
These studies of the Israeli navy bulldozing of the our bodies of Palestinians are usually not remoted to the Zikim crossing. IDF whistleblowers who spoke to NCS and the anti-occupation veterans’ NGO Breaking the Silence (BTS) pointed to a broader sample of the navy mishandling the useless in Gaza throughout the warfare.
One IDF whistleblower, who beforehand served at an outpost in the Netzarim Corridor, spoke to NCS on situation of anonymity for concern of reprisal.
The soldier mentioned that 9 our bodies of unarmed Palestinians had been left to decompose for almost two days round his base in early 2024. The odor of the rotting corpses grew to become overwhelming as canine scavenged the stays, he mentioned.
“Our commander asked the D9s – the bulldozers – to cover up the bodies with sand,” he recalled. “Just to see this amount of bodies around you, when you see they’re unarmed, when you see dogs eating them to play with the bones and legs and skull. It’s terrible.”
To the whistleblower’s information, no images had been taken of the our bodies to permit for later identification or to mark the location. “The families maybe don’t know what happened with their loved ones,” he mentioned.
BTS, which gives a discussion board for Israeli troops to talk out and verifies their accounts, additionally mentioned that it had acquired quite a few testimonies from troopers on this apply.
Another former IDF soldier – a captain who served in a command heart overseeing Israeli troops in Gaza in late 2023 – mentioned he by no means acquired any steerage from the navy specifying the therapy of the our bodies of Palestinians killed in Gaza. When the physique of a Palestinian killed by Israeli forces blocked a street in Gaza, he says officers in the command heart finally determined to make use of a bulldozer to push the physique right into a shallow grave alongside the facet of the street.
“We were never given any protocol or any order of how to handle at all any bodies of either combatant or non-combatant that we came across in the war,” the whistleblower advised NCS on situation of anonymity.
The IDF didn’t reply to NCS’s questions on the testimonies from former troopers.
Over the final two years, the Israeli navy has repeatedly buried the our bodies of Palestinians into unmarked, shallow or mass graves in places throughout Gaza. This contains a whole bunch of our bodies uncovered final 12 months at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, based on authorities there, and the killing of 15 aid staff in the south of the territory in March, which had been detailed in a NCS report.
The IDF has persistently denied burying Palestinians in mass graves.
Bulldozers have additionally been used at varied factors in the warfare by the IDF to systematically destroy Palestinian cemeteries. Last 12 months, a NCS investigation discovered that the Israeli navy desecrated not less than 16 cemeteries in its floor offensive in Gaza, leaving gravestones ruined, soil upturned and, in some circumstances, our bodies unearthed.
The IDF couldn’t account for the destruction of the cemeteries recognized, however mentioned the navy typically has “no other choice” however to focus on places it claimed Hamas makes use of for navy functions and defined that our bodies had been faraway from some gravesites in makes an attempt to rescue hostages.
With many Palestinians who tried to get meals this summer season nonetheless missing, the determined seek for solutions continues for his or her households. Some stay hopeful that their family members should be alive someplace, similar to in Israeli detainment or displaced elsewhere in Gaza.
“Ammar (Wadi) was someone whose absence leaves a huge void – losing him feels like losing a part of yourself,” his brother Hossam mentioned. “If he’s martyred, may God have mercy on him, but if he’s alive, at least we can hold on to hope.”
Credits:
Senior Producer/Reporter: Abeer Salman
Investigative Reporter/Producer: Yahya Abou-Ghazala
Visual Investigations Producer: Thomas Bordeaux
Jerusalem Correspondent: Jeremy Diamond
Supervising Editor, Visual Investigations: Gianluca Mezzofiore
Data & Graphics Editor: Lou Robinson
Supervising Investigative Producer: Barbara Arvanitidis
Senior Investigative Editor: Ed Upright
Senior Video Editor: Oscar Featherstone
Investigative Video Editor: Mark Baron
Managing Photojournalist: Alex Platt
Tareq El-Helou and Mohammad al-Sawalhi contributed reporting