Gaza: Devastated Palestinians were seen reburying bodies that had been dug up from a cemetery in Gaza City, the site of an Israeli army ground operation against Hamas since late October.
Footage from the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood cemetery shows remains laid on soil mounds, covered in bags.
The footage also showed more bodies scattered around destroyed graves while twelve guys in masks used shovels to rebury them.
On Saturday, Hamas accused Israeli soldiers of "stealing 150 bodies of recently buried martyrs" and "destroying 1,100 graves" in the cemetery.
The Israeli army declined to comment further when AFP contacted them, saying they were investigating the claims.
“We were surprised to see the bodies exhumed” on Saturday morning, said a local man surnamed Aliwa, who was among the people reburying the bodies. He refused to share his full name, AFP reported.
He accused the Israeli army of "running over bodies" with a "bulldozer". There were what appeared to be track marks in the soil close to the graves.
“We are currently retrieving the corpses present in the cemetery,” he said, adding that only a “small number” of bodies had been identified.
The conflict started on October 7 with an unprecedented Hamas offensive on southern Israel that claimed almost 1,140 Israeli lives.
Additionally, Israel claims that Hamas captured some 250 captives, 132 of whom are still in custody.
According to the health ministry in Hamas-run territory, Israel retaliated by bombarding the area and deploying ground forces, killing at least 22,722 civilians, the majority of whom were women and children. Gaza