Gaza City mourns 112 Palestinians in unprecedented mass funeral
Large crowds gathered in Gaza City for a mass funeral for 112 victims – mainly women, children and people with disabilities – who were killed when Israeli forces struck a residential block in the Sabra neighbourhood on 22 November 2023.
Recoveries began two weeks after the strike, with the Gaza Civil Defence, under the Hamas‑run interior ministry, retrieving bodies from beneath collapsed rubble. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) supplied protective gear, training, and excavators that helped the local teams to conduct the operation safely and with dignity.
The remains were laid in rows, each wrapped in a Palestinian flag and accompanied by photographs of the deceased. After families carried each victim away, the funeral became the biggest of its kind in the occupied territory.
“After we managed to retrieve them and bury them, perhaps we can be partially relieved despite the pain of loss,” one mourner, Ali Abu Sharia, said. “The funeral is a feeling that was supposed to be felt – pain, grief and loss.”
The victims, listed as 44 children, 38 women and seven people with disabilities, came from two extended families that gave names to the entire strike. A Civil Defence spokesman, Mahmoud Basal, estimated that about 180 civilians were inside the leveled building, with 90% presumed dead.
The Gaza health ministry – reports welcomed by the UN – records more than 73,000 deaths in the Strip since the start of the war, a figure that still rises as new remains are recovered or families locate missing relatives.
This mass funeral, set against a backdrop of ongoing bombardment, reflects both the urgent need for grief rituals and the broader humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza.
