The ongoing recovery of human remains in the Gaza Strip, especially of women and children after Israel bombed their homes, poses the possibility that war crimes have been committed, the UN warned on Tuesday.
“The remains of what appears to be entire families are being exhumed in sites that were sprayed by Israeli attacks,” said the UN’s chief of human rights, Volker Türk, in a statement.
“I am concerned that the remains recovered so far are just the tip of the iceberg,” he said, noting that much of Gaza has been devastated by Israeli bombings or demolition with heavy machinery and explosives.
“Today, many areas of Gaza where the Israeli Army is deployed continue to be devastated by excavators without any respect for the dead under the debris,” he said.
“All possible efforts should be made to document and identify these victims, preserve forensic information and biological samples, record the places where they are buried and inform their families,” Türk insisted.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said it was crucial to preserve evidence of violations and even the sites destroyed, and called for “international investigators to be allowed into all parts of Gaza to help collect evidence.”
“The discovery of numerous remains under the debris in the City of Gaza revives concerns about war crimes and other atrocious crimes,” Turk warned.
According to the Palestinian Civil Defense, more than 630 bodies and other human remains have been recovered under the destroyed buildings of Gaza between November 2025 and September 2026, although the number of people missing under the debris is estimated to exceed 8,000.
The head of the Office of the High Commissioner for the Palestinian Territories, Ajith Sanghai, added in a press conference that Israel’s actions “are making any systematic and large-scale search, recovery and identification effort practically impossible.”
In that sense, he denounced that Israeli soldiers are crushing debris containing human remains, without any control, and at the same time blocking the entry of heavy machinery and trained personnel necessary for large-scale recovery operations.
Israel also blocks the entry of forensic and identification tools, which prevents many families from identifying the remains of their deceased relatives, Sanghai added.
“There is a potential risk that the necessary evidence will be lost to ensure that all those responsible for atrocious crimes will be held accountable, and the anguish of thousands of families who already live in a permanent state of fear, insecurity and need will also be prolonged,” he said.
The head of the Office of the High Commissioner in the Palestinian Territories, on the other hand, calculated that it would take ten years to complete the recovery of bodies at the current rate, and even more if the time needed for the identification of those bodies is taken into account.
The Israeli war in Gaza, unleashed after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, reduced much of Palestinian territory to debris. Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States, the European Union and other countries.
Israeli bombing and land invasion in Gaza killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, including more than 1,350 after a ceasefire was agreed in October last year, according to figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, which have been validated by the UN.
The Hamas attack of 2023 killed 1,221 people in Israel, according to Israeli official figures.
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