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Thousands of Palestinians have been reported as missing since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The ICRC said up to 6,400 Palestinians are feared to be trapped under debris, buried without identification, or held in Israeli detention, since the war was triggred by Hamas’s attack inside Israel on 7 October.
Since April this year, 1,100 new cases of missing people in Gaza have been registered and remain unsolved, the organisation said.
“Each week we can receive anywhere between 500 and 2,500 calls to our hotlines, and the majority of these are requests for missing family members,” Sarah Davies, an ICRC spokesperson, said.
“The level of requests fluctuates, sometimes depending on the situation in areas of Gaza – if there are hostilities close to large numbers of people, or evacuation instructions issued, our hotline operators receive more calls with tracing requests in the hours and days that follow.
“Unfortunately, in such chaotic situations, people can be separated easily. People are panicked, sometimes it is dark and difficult to see, if there are explosions nearby people flee and lose one another.”
Since 7 October, the ICRC has reported more than 8,700 missing Palestinians in Gaza and has engaged with 7,429 Palestinian families to gather information.
About 2,300 cases have been resolved, meaning families have found their relatives, either alive or dead, the ICRC reported.
It comes after Israeli forces retreated from some Gaza City districts overnight after a fierce, week-long military offensive, leaving dozens of dead.
The Gaza Civil Emergency Service said teams had collected around 60 bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces over the past week.
The Israeli military had said on Thursday that its forces were working to dismantle Hamas capabilities in Gaza City, and that it “follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.” It said the same was not true of Hamas.
In the 7 October attack, hamas killed around 1,200 people and took another 250 people hostage, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel’s forces have killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, medical authorities in Gaza say, in the nine months since.
