‘I wanted to hug whatever remained’: Gaza families’ 3-year wait for funeral

Gaza holds mass funeral for 112 victims recovered after three years

Gaza City, the Gaza Strip – Lara Abu Shreia could not sleep on Monday night.

Every time she closed her eyes, she says, the faces of her loved ones appeared before her. So the 39-year-old turned to her phone, scrolling through photos as she prepared herself for a long-awaited farewell to her family.

In the largest mass funeral held in Gaza since Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians began in 2023, thousands gathered in Gaza City’s Sabra neighbourhood on Tuesday to bid farewell to 112 members of the Abu Shreia and al-Hassaina families whose remains were recently unearthed from beneath the rubble nearly three years after an Israeli air attack.

When the white bags containing the recovered remains arrived at the funeral site, Lara stood crying, surrounded by other mourning relatives.

“Today felt like the first day I lost them,” she says. “It was a renewed grief, saying goodbye to them this way.”

It was about confronting the loss of almost her entire family. On November 22, 2023, a strike hit the family compound in Sabra, killing 14 of her closest relatives. Among them were her mother, Nawal; her eight siblings – four brothers and four sisters; as well as nieces and nephews.

At the time, Lara, her husband and their five children had been displaced to southern Gaza after a forced evacuation threat issued by Israel at the start of the war, which has killed more than 73,370 Palestinians. But other family members had stayed behind.