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Civil defence teams in the Gaza Strip managed on Tuesday to recover the bodies of 30 people from a Palestinian family, out of 60 who died under the rubble of their home in western Gaza City, destroyed by Israeli airstrikes during the ongoing conflict.

The house is the first site in an organised operation launched by the civil defence on Monday to search for thousands of Palestinian bodies trapped under the ruins of homes and buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes.

In a statement, the civil defence said: “For the second day in a row, our teams have recovered 30 bodies and remains of martyrs, out of 60, belonging to members of the Salem family, who were trapped under the rubble of the Abu Ramadan family home. They were targeted while inside by the occupation in the Al-Rimal area, west of Gaza City.”

The statement added that search operations will continue using limited equipment, including a digger, to recover the remaining bodies from the house destroyed by the Israeli army on 19 December 2023.

On Monday, the civil defence announced the start of organised operations to search for the bodies of Palestinians missing under the rubble of homes and small buildings destroyed by Israel during months of mass attacks in Gaza City.

READ: Gaza Civil Defence continue efforts to recover bodies

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.