‘I have become afraid of my own memories’

In some thousands of funerals in Gaza during the past 15 months, mourners have put a bright orange jacket on the body.

The jackets are usually worn well and are characterized by dust, and sometimes blood. They belong to the civil defense, the main emergency service in Gaza.

Throughout the Israeli bombing, the civil defense was responsible for withdrawing the living and dead from the rubble. Along with the ambulance service in Gaza, rescuers made some of the most horrific works on the tape.

They paid a sharp price. On the first day of peace on Monday, the agency said that 99 rescue workers were killed and 319 were injured, and some of them suffer from injuries that changed life.

When the civil defense is buried, where the dead jackets are placed on their bodies.

“We put the jacket there because our colleague has sacrificed his spirit in it,” Nuh Chagnobi, a 24 -year -old rescue worker, said in an interview by phone from Gaza City.

“We hope that God will show that this man has done good in his life, and that he will save others.”

Israel has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians in Gaza during the conflict – most of them women and children – and were injured by more than 111,000, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health, whose numbers witnessed reliable by the United Nations. A recent study published by The Lancet Medical Journal that the death toll during the first nine months of the war may have been reduced by more than 40 %.

The fragile shooting stop that came into effect at the end of last week. But for rescue workers in the civil defense, the next stage of their work began.

The agency appreciates that there are more than 10,000 people buried under the vast sea of ​​rubble across Gaza. This number depends on the information collected during the war about who was in every building destroyed by Israel, and who knows the agency to have already been recovered.

In the areas occupied by the entire Israeli forces during the destruction, they do not have detailed information and depend on the population to help them. In the Tel Al -Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City on Tuesday, the Chaghnobi rescue worker found a man with information about the fate of a flat residential building.

“We told us that seven people were recovered, but there was an elderly man, a child and an infant left behind,” Al -Shajnoubi said.

“Fortunately, there was a special owned bulldozer nearby and we were able to dig the top layer of the rubble,” he said. “And under it we found three skeletons that match the description.”

Al -Shaghnoubi accumulated greatly during the war by sharing his experiences on social media. Although it moves some pictures, others show the horror he and other young rescue workers faced.

One of the video shows it under the rubble, carefully evacuated a baby’s body from another young child, who is alive. Other photos he sent to BBC show the maximum nature of rescue work.

“You must become anesthetic over time,” Al -Shajnoubi said. “But I became worse. I feel more pain, not less. I find it difficult to overcome it. I saw 50 of my colleagues die in front of me. From outside Gaza you can imagine this?”

Since the first Israeli hostage was released from Gaza last week, compared to 90 Palestinians of Israeli prisons, the Israeli authorities described the wide psychological support while waiting for the returning hostages.

But for those who suffer from terror in Gaza, this support is very limited. None of the four rescue workers who spoke to BBC this week of Gaza said that they had offered advice.

Mohamed Lafi, a 25 -year -old rescue worker in Gaza City, said, but no one is talking about him.

Luvi, who was with the agency for six years, has a wife and a baby son at home. “When I pull the body of a child from the rubble, I scream inside it if he is at the same age of my son. He shakes my body.”

Abdullah Al -Ajdalwi, the year of the 24 -year -old civil defense and lives with his parents in Gaza City, said that even if the consultation is widely available, “a year of treatment will not be sufficient for one day of this job.”

Al -Majdalwi said that when he returned to his home between the transformations, he made jobs and small jobs constantly, “because I am afraid of my own memories.”

“I am very alone,” he said. “I am not really talking to others about what I saw. But I feel that my whole body has become narrow, and I need a kind of treatment because things accumulate.”

Al -Majdallawi said that civil defense workers had been from abroad as heroes. “But they do not see what is happening inside. At home, I am fighting against myself.”

With the start of the ceasefire, new photos from inside Gaza showed scenes of semi -existing destruction, especially in the north of the pocket. Civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said that the agency hoped to restore the remaining dead from under the rubble within 100 days, but he admitted that he was a difficult goal, because he had no bulldozers and other heavy equipment so far.

The Civil Defense accused Israel of targeting and destroying its cars and equipment in strikes – an accusation that Israel denies. The BBC rescue workers told that they are currently working with simple manual tools such as hammers and have a few operating vehicles. “We have a few equipment that we need another civil defense to save the civil defense,” said Al -Majdaloy.

A spokesman for the agency said on Friday that they were able to recover only 162 bodies since it began a ceasefire almost a week ago.

The United Nations Coordination Office for Coordination has warned that the recovery of the bodies may take years due to the lack of equipment and employees, and its estimated 37 million tons of ruins full of indispensable bombs and dangerous materials such as asbestos.

The amount of time in which many dead hinder the identification process. At the European Hospital in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, people were looking for their loved ones this week between the remains that were brought to the hospital and placed abroad on white sheets. In many cases, the only option was to search for shoes, clothes or other personal effects.

“I think I will get to know my son immediately, even if his face does not have no features and he is just a skeleton,” said Ali Asur, a university professor, about his 18 -year -old child, Mahjud, said:

“I will get to know him because I am his father and know him better than a million people,” he said.

He said that Assyria still houses the hope that he would have been captured, but he intended to search in the dead every day until he knew. “Anytime they bring more remains, I will come,” he said. “And if I see my son, I will raise it from the other bodies and carry it away.”

Niserin was two young men looking for her 16 -year -old son Motim, who said she had left her house in House for 15 minutes and never no longer.

“I opened every shroud here in search of the clothes he was wearing, in an attempt to smell it,” she said. She was surrounded by human remains. “I feel like I am living in a cemetery,” she said. “It is a horror city.”

The Civil Defense Agency estimates that approximately 3,000 people may have been burned in the bombing, and theft of some families that finish their research. But there are many those that still need to recover.

“These people need to find and honor them,” said the rescue worker. “This work is waiting for us. All we need is the equipment and we will do so.”

The Mohit Al -Khatib and Omar Ahmed Tabash contributed to this report.