Israeli army destroys Gaza machinery used for rubble removal and body recovery

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In the early hours of Tuesday, an intense wave of Israeli air strikes hit a municipality garage in northern Gaza, destroying bulldozers and other civil machinery essential to rescue operations and public services in a region already devastated by months of relentless warfare.

Among the machinery reduced to twisted metal were nine bulldozers, a sewerage lorry, a water tanker, five service vehicles, two “936-type bulldozers”, two tractors, a waste compactor, a fuel distribution lorry and a mobile power generator, said Saadi Al Dabbour, director of public relations for Jabalia Al Nazla Municipality.

“This was not just a strike on machines, it was a strike on life itself,” Mr Al Dabbour told The National. “These bulldozers and vehicles were the backbone of our ability to serve the public, to clear rubble, to rescue survivors, and to restore some semblance of life. Now, that backbone is broken.

“This is a deliberate attempt to make Gaza unlivable. To prevent aid from reaching people, to stop us from burying the dead, to punish the survivors.”

The machinery at the garage, which has been hit repeatedly by the Israeli military during its war against Hamas and other militant groups, was donated under a Qatari-Egyptian reconstruction initiative after a fragile ceasefire began in January.

The ceasefire, which collapsed with the resumption of Israeli attacks last month, had allowed people forced to flee northern Gaza to return and look for loved ones left behind under rubble after Israeli air strikes on their neighbourhoods.

Israel's military said the air strikes on the municipality attacked vehicles “used for terrorist purposes” against its troops fighting in the Gaza Strip. “Hamas used these vehicles to plant explosives, dig underground bunkers, breach fences and clear rubble to locate weapons and military equipment underneath,” it said in a statement announcing air strikes on machinery in Jabalia and in Gaza city on April 22.

Gaza's civil defence said the destruction of the machinery had made its work of rescue and recovery even more difficult and dangerous.

“We used these bulldozers every single day − to retrieve the wounded, to dig out the dead, to open roads for ambulances and prepare ground for temporary shelters,” Mohammed Al Mughir, the agency's director of supply and logistics, told The National.

“We were barely managing before. Now, we return to our bare hands.”

Mr Al Mughir said the bulldozers brought in during the ceasefire had helped to ease the strain on exhausted rescue crews. They were also used to dig up and rebury people from mass graves created to accommodate the sheer number of dead in the war, which has claimed more than 51,300 lives in Gaza since it began in October 7, 2023 with a deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel.

“They knew where we stored the bulldozers. The co-ordinates were shared with the relevant international bodies. The area was never designated a danger zone. Still, they were hit,” Mr Al Mughir said.

“It’s a clear message: stop trying to save lives.”

Ghazi Al Majdalawi, a researcher at the Palestinian Centre for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared, said the Israeli attack suggested a concerted effort to obscure evidence of mass atrocities.

“This was not just about bulldozers; it was about erasing our ability to retrieve the evidence,” he told The National. “Thousands of bodies still lie buried. Destroying the means to reach them is a crime in itself.”

Mr Al Majdalawi, whose organisation has documented the challenges of recovering the dead from collapsed buildings and mass graves, said each bulldozer represented the chance to discover the fate of people missing in the war and to offer victims a dignified burial.

“To deny people the right to bury their loved ones, to find the missing, is an unspeakable cruelty,” he said. “It’s an extension of the violence, one that does not end when the bombing stops.”

Municipal authorities and civil society figures are now urging the international community to act by ending Israel's total blockade of humanitarian aid since March 2 allowing the entry of more rescue equipment and specialist teams.

“We need more than condemnation,” Mr Al Dabbour said. “We need bulldozers. We need safety. We need the world to remember that behind every destroyed machine is a buried child, a grieving mother, a life waiting to be saved.”