- By Akansha Pandey
- Thu, 12 Feb 2026 03:25 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
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.
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.
'They Were Martyred And I Survived'
Around 11:30 am on December 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 neighbourhood.
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.
In the days leading to the strike, the Israeli military had dropped leaflets over the area, ordering people to leave and head to the southern half of the strip. Mahmoud Hammad refused to leave.
For a while, Nema Hammad and the kids went to her parents' home in the nearby Jabaliya district, while her husband stayed behind. But Nema Hammad wanted to come back. Her husband tried to discourage her, with Israeli bombardment all around. But on Dec. 5, he found his wife and kids at his door.
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"Either we live together, or we are martyred together," his wife told him.
"They were martyred, and I survived," he said. His brother, sister-in-law and their four sons were also killed.
Mahmoud Hammad was taken to a nearby clinic with multiple injuries, including fractures in the chest, pelvis, knee and internal chest bleeding.
After the strike, neighbours were able to recover the body of his eldest son, Ismail, and two of his brother's children. The rest remained under the rubble.
Digging Through His home
After recovering from his wounds, Hammad returned to his home's ruins and set up a shelter nearby to live in.
"I stayed with them, my wife and children, in the rubble," he said. "Every day, I am talking to them. Their scent lingered, and I felt a deep connection with them."
He began the search for their bodies. He first sought help from Gaza's Civil Defence Corps. But rescue teams never came, either because it was too dangerous amid intense Israeli bombing or because they didn't have the equipment and machinery to remove the rubble.
So he started digging himself. He began with the collapsed ceilings and walls, breaking them into small stones and putting them in sacks. Piles of dozens of sacks now surround the site like a wall.
In March 2024, he found some remains he believed were of his family.
"There were simple bones covered with flesh, some of which had been eaten by animals," he said.
In late 2024, he had dug down to his brother's apartment, which had been on the third floor, where he found the bodies of his brother and sister-in-law. He buried them in a temporary graveyard that residents of the area created during the war to hold their dead until they could be moved to a proper cemetery.
Since October, Hammad resumed digging. He drove down nine meters (30 feet). Finally, he reached his own apartment, which had been on the ground floor. Now he has been focusing on clearing rubble from the eastern side, because that's where he knows his wife was in her last moments.
"They were eating rice pudding in the living room," he said.
Sifting through the dirt with his sieve, he found tiny bone fragments. He shared images of the bones through WhatsApp with a doctor who said the fragments, which included a jawbone, appear to be from a small baby.
He believes it's the remains of the baby girl they had been waiting for. They had planned to name her Haifa, after one of Hammad's sisters-in-law who was killed by an Israeli strike just a few weeks before the strike on their home.
"All the baby's clothes, a crib, and a room were prepared, and everyone at home was waiting for her arrival," he said.
Discovering the bone fragments has brought him hope.
"There's a clue that I'm reaching my wife and other children," he said.
Once he collects enough remains, he said, he will give them a proper burial.
(Note: Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by The Daily Jagran and has been published through a syndicated feed. Source - PTI)