As the new school year began, and while Gaza’s children were preparing to return to their classrooms, their families were instead preparing to lay them to rest in a solemn mass funeral. Their small dreams had been reduced to remains and bones recovered from beneath the rubble of homes destroyed by the Israeli occupation.

With little more than their bare hands, residents and rescue teams in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood managed to recover the remains and bones of victims who had remained trapped beneath the rubble. The scene captures one of the harshest manifestations of the human tragedy inflicted on Gaza by the Israeli aggression.

Among the bodies and remains recovered from beneath the rubble of homes belonging to the Malqa family were around 70 children, who were killed after their homes were bombed without warning. They returned to their families after being hidden beneath the rubble—but this time in coffins carrying the remains of their bodies, rather than the schoolbags they were supposed to carry on their first day of school.

The third mass funeral held in the Gaza Strip was wrapped in Palestinian flags, turning the funeral ceremony into a living testament to the scale of the tragedy endured by civilians and to the devastating price paid by children and women amid the continuing destruction and the international community’s failure to put an end to Israeli violations against civilians.

These funerals do not merely carry the names of victims. They preserve the memory of families who lost their sons and daughters, and of children deprived of their basic rights to life, education, and safety, while their remains stand as witnesses to the crimes committed against them before the eyes and ears of the world.

By holding funerals for the victims and burying their remains, families are attempting to restore what little dignity remains for the dead and to preserve the details of the tragedy in the memory of future generations—so that the alleged crimes of the Israeli entity are not erased from collective memory, and so that the names of the children who left this life before they had a chance to grow up remain alive in the hearts and minds of those they left behind.

The bones and remains recovered from beneath the rubble remain silent witnesses to the scale of the destruction inflicted on civilians in the Gaza Strip and to tragedies that do not end when the Israeli bombardment stops. They continue until the victims are recovered and buried, telling future generations the story of children who were supposed to begin a new school year, only to be carried instead to their final resting place in a mass funeral.