The morticians are working like masons in the Gaza cemetery, piling pieces of ash into tight rectangles, one next to the other, for freshly dug graves.
More than 10 months into the Gaza war, so many bodies are arriving at the cemetery in Deir al-Balah that workers working in the hot sun have no room to bury them.
“The cemetery is so full that now we are digging graves one on top of the other, we have placed the dead on a flat surface,” says Sadi Hassan Barakeh, who leads his team of gravediggers.
Barakeh, 63, has been burying the dead for 28 years. He says that in “all the wars in Gaza” he has “never seen anything like this.”
Previously, Barakeh also oversaw burials at the nearby Ansar cemetery, which covers 3.5 hectares (8.6 acres).
But now “the Ansar cemetery is completely full. So many people have died there,” he says, his clothes caked with mud from grave digging.
Now he only looks after the Al-Saueid cemetery, which has 5.5 hectares of graves. Still, despite having one cemetery instead of two, he works “every day from six in the morning until six in the evening.”
“Before the war, we had one or two, maximum five funerals a week,” he says, wearing a white prayer cap that matches his long beard.
“There are weeks now when I bury 200 to 300 people. It’s unbelievable.”
‘I can’t sleep’
The death toll in Gaza from more than 10 months of war has exceeded 40,000, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, putting pressure on the country’s population as well as cemeteries.
Barakeh witnesses tragedies every day. Spade in hand, he encourages his 12 workers as they prepare and close dozens of graves each day.
However, some photos from the night are hard to forget.
“I can’t sleep seeing so many mutilated bodies of children and dead women,” he said. “I buried 47 women from one family,” he added.
The war, which began with a Hamas attack on October 7, resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally compiled by AFP based on Israeli official figures.
Hamas militants also captured 251 people, 111 of whom are still held in Gaza, 39 of whom the military says are dead.
At least 40,005 people have been killed in Gaza in Israel’s retaliatory military attacks, according to the Health Ministry, although the ministry did not give details of civilian and militant deaths.
“I buried a lot of women and children, and only two or three Hamas people,” Barakeh says.
‘Why children?’
He said that if the Israelis “have a problem with (Yahya) Sinwar, why do they harm children?”, referring to the alleged mastermind of the October 7 attacks, who is now Hamas’ overall leader.
“Let them kill Sinwar and all the others, but why the women and children?”
Mounds of recently dug earth commemorate recent burials. Graves with white headstones fill almost all available spaces, while people dig new holes in the few empty spaces.
The team is forming a human chain to carry blocks of cinder, the price of which has risen sharply since Gaza’s factories closed due to a shortage of fuel and raw materials.
“Before the war it was one shekel ($0.27), today it is 10 or 12 shekels,” he lamented.
Barakeh says that apart from grave diggers and workers carrying blocks of ashes, hardly anyone comes to funerals anymore.
“Before the war, sometimes 1,000 people would attend a funeral; today there are days when we bury 100 people and there aren’t even 20 people to bury them.”
Above his head, the constant hum of an Israeli surveillance drone reminds him of the aerial threat, which brings a constant stream of bodies.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
