More than 10 months into the Gaza war, so many bodies are arriving at Al-Soueid cemetery in Gaza’s Deir el-Balah that gravediggers are forced to build graves on top of other graves.
Undertakers are working like bricklayers in the cemetery, piling cinder blocks into tight rectangles, side by side, for freshly dug graves.
Leading his team of gravediggers, Saadi Hassan Barakeh, 63, now handles Al-Soueid cemetery, with its 5.5 hectares of graves. Previously, he also oversaw burials at the nearby Ansar cemetery, which covers 3.5 hectares. But now “the Ansar cemetery is completely full,” he told AFP.
The two cemeteries are located in the city of Deir el-Balah in the center of the Gaza Strip that has been bombarded by Israel for more than ten months after Hamas launched the unprecedented October 7 attack in Israel.
“Before the war, we had one or two funerals per week, maximum five,” Barakeh says, wearing a white prayer cap that matches his long beard.
“Now, there are weeks when I bury 200 to 300 people. It's unbelievable.”
Yet even with one cemetery instead of two, Barakeh said he works “every day, from six in the morning to six in the evening.”
Piles of Martyrs
Barakeh, leading his team of gravediggers, says “The cemetery is so full that we now dig graves on top of other graves, we've piled the dead in levels.”
Barakeh has been burying the dead for 28 years. In “all the wars in Gaza,” he says he has “never seen crimes like this.”
Barakeh bears daily witness to the tragedies. Hoe in hand, he gives encouragement to his 12 workers as they prepare and close dozens of graves every day.
At night, however, some images are hard to forget.
“I can't sleep after seeing so many mangled children's bodies and dead women,” he told AFP, adding: “I buried 47 women from the Tabatibi family, including 16 who were pregnant. What crime have these women committed?”
The October 7 Hamas attack which triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 40,005 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
“I buried a lot of women and children, and only two or three guys from Hamas,” says Barakeh.
‘Why the children?’
If Israelis “have a problem with (Yahya) Sinwar and with (Ismail) Haniyeh, why do they harm children?” he adds angrily.
Barakeh is convinced that the Israelis want to eliminate the entire Palestinian people.
Graves with white headstones fill nearly all the available space, while men dig new holes in the few vacant areas.
The team forms a human chain to carry the cinder blocks, whose price has soared since Gaza’s factories closed due to a lack of fuel and raw materials.
“One shekel ($0.27) before the war, 10 or 12 today,” he lamented.
Besides gravediggers and the workers carrying cinder blocks, hardly anyone comes to funerals anymore, Barakeh says.
“Before the war, there were sometimes 1,000 people at one funeral; today there are days when we bury 100 people and there aren’t even 20 to lay them to rest.”
High above his head, the constant hum of an Israeli surveillance drone serves as a reminder of the aerial threat creating a steady stream of bodies.
