Thousands of mourners gathered in Gaza City on Tuesday to bid farewell to 112 Palestinian victims whose remains were recovered from beneath the rubble of homes destroyed by Israeli occupation forces during the genocidal assault on the Al-Sabra neighborhood in late 2023.

The unprecedented funeral, one of the largest held in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli war on the besieged enclave, commemorated members of the Al-Hasayna and Abu Sharia families, who were killed when Israeli airstrikes leveled an entire residential block on November 23, 2023, just hours before the first humanitarian truce came into effect.

The mass funeral offered a harrowing reminder of one of the deadliest massacres committed against Palestinian families during the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

An open square in Gaza City was filled with rows of bodies wrapped in white burial shrouds and Palestinian flags as grieving relatives gathered to perform funeral prayers for loved ones who had remained trapped beneath the rubble for nearly three years.

The air echoed with recitations from the Qur'an, cries of grief and chants of "Allahu Akbar" as families mourned children, parents and relatives whose remains had only recently been recovered.

The bodies were retrieved after Civil Defense teams concluded an intensive search and recovery operation in the Al-Sabra neighborhood under extremely difficult conditions.

According to the Civil Defense, rescue crews spent 136 consecutive hours clearing debris before announcing the completion of search operations on Saturday.

The effort was carried out amid severe shortages of heavy machinery, fuel and rescue equipment caused by the ongoing Israeli blockade and the widespread destruction of Gaza's infrastructure.

Recovery teams said access to the area had been impossible for many months because of continued Israeli military operations and the dangers posed by the devastated neighborhood.

Official figures indicate that the recovered victims included 40 children, 38 women and seven persons with disabilities, underscoring that the overwhelming majority of those killed were civilians.

The victims belonged primarily to the Al-Hasayna and Abu Sharia families, whose homes were reduced to rubble during the Israeli bombardment.

The attack buried dozens of residents beneath collapsed buildings, leaving families unable to recover or bury their loved ones for an extended period.

For relatives, Tuesday's funeral marked the painful conclusion of a years-long wait to provide the victims with dignified burials according to Islamic tradition.

The funeral has become a powerful symbol of the immense human cost of Israel's military campaign in Gaza, where entire families have been erased and thousands of victims have remained missing beneath destroyed buildings.

The massacre in Al-Sabra occurred only hours before the first humanitarian pause in the war, yet rescue teams were prevented from reaching the site because of continuing military operations and the destruction left in their wake.

Only after conditions recently allowed limited access were emergency crews able to begin recovering the remains.

For many Palestinians, the mass funeral represented not only a farewell to those who perished but also a renewed reminder of the immense suffering endured by Gaza's civilian population throughout the ongoing Israeli assault.

As funeral prayers concluded, mourners carried the shrouded victims to their final resting places, pledging that the memory of those killed in the Al-Sabra massacre would remain alive despite years spent beneath the ruins of their homes. (ILKHA)