GAZA, (PIC)
The al-Aqqad family in Gaza is still searching for two female relatives who disappeared more than two and a half years ago during an Israeli military incursion in Khan Yunis, as rights groups warn of a worsening forced disappearance crisis across the enclave.
The case resurfaced after Israeli soldiers reportedly circulated a photo showing a Palestinian woman and her daughter blindfolded inside an Israeli military vehicle.
The family said the two women in the image were their missing relatives, who vanished during the December 2023 assault on the area.
According to the family, the same Israeli operation killed the father and led to the son’s arrest, while the fate of the mother and daughter remains unknown.
Relatives said they initially believed the two women may have been buried under the rubble, but no trace of them was found.
Alaa Skafi, director of the Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights, said the organization had submitted official requests to Israeli authorities asking about the women’s fate but had received no response, raising suspicions of enforced disappearance.
Rights reports estimate that more than 11,200 people in Gaza may be missing or forcibly disappeared, including over 4,700 women and children.
Families are facing prolonged uncertainty, while many women are left dealing with complex legal and social issues related to inheritance, marriage and family status without official confirmation of whether missing relatives are alive or dead.
Rights groups say the crisis has been deepened by forced displacement, bodies trapped under rubble, undocumented emergency burials, the collapse of civil records and communications, and the destruction of evidence, surveillance footage and graves during Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said 377 unidentified bodies out of 480 handed over during the war were buried because their identities could not be confirmed.
