Palestinians prepare the graves for eight members of Abu Jarad family, including three children, who medics said were killed by an Israeli tank shell, at a cemetery in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip
Reuters/Gaza
Almost half of the Gaza Strip is a no-go area shelled by Israeli ground forces during almost three weeks of fighting, sending not just the living but the dead in search of a safe place to rest.
Many graveyards - along with whole neighbourhoods once home to hundreds of thousands of people - are too dangerous to approach, pushing some families to cram their dead among the more than 800 killed by the bombs into old, or occupied, graves closer to safety.
A sign outside the Martyrs' Cemetery in northern Gaza warned that it was full, like many in the crowded coastal Strip, but that didn't stop the funeral processions from coming.
Grave diggers said they had resorted to burying two people in the space of one, or opening up old family plots, sweeping the bones of their occupants to one side and adding a new body.
"In normal situations people will go to the other martyrs' cemetery in the North or bury their dead in separate graves. But nothing is normal these days," said Abu Bilal, a grave digger.
Wiping the sweat from his brow with his forearm, he gestured with his dirty hands and complained that though he had buried hundreds of war victims, working with slain children still left him jarred.
"Death is tough, but I can't act normal when I bury a child killed by an Israeli missile. The image of his, or her, innocent smile doesn't leave my memory so easily," the father of five told Reuters.
Gaza medics say more than 800 Palestinians, most of them civilians including more than 100 children, have been killed.
