by Ed Newman, Radio Havana Cub

GAZA OFFICIALS have warned that the bodies of more than 10,000 Palestinians remain buried beneath the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli bombardments, urging immediate international intervention to assist recovery efforts. Gaza’s National Committee for Missing Persons said in a statement on Thursday that the “humanitarian situation in Gaza requires urgent intervention to end the suffering of thousands of families waiting to know the fate of their children.”

It called for the immediate entry of international rescue teams and heavy equipment to help retrieve the trapped and missing.

The committee condemned Israel’s ongoing restrictions on vital rescue machinery as “clear violation of international humanitarian law” and appealed to the global community “to act swiftly to save lives and uphold human dignity”.

Only 28 per cent of the required number of aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip since the American “peace plan” was announced, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.

The Gaza Government office said that Israel is carrying out “its policy of strangulation”.

The occupation, it said, allows the entry of larger quantities of “nutritionally worthless goods such as soft drinks, chocolate, processed meals, and chips, which reach the markets at prices more than 15 times their real value due to the occupation’s control over supply chains”.

This, the office said, confirms Israel’s “reliance on a policy of engineering starvation, controlling food security, and directly targeting civilian lives”.

Officials said that the shortage of specialised rescue equipment has made it nearly impossible to continue searching for the thousands of victims still trapped beneath the ruins.

Meanwhile, Israel has continued violating the ceasefire as its forces have killed more than 200 Palestinians since the truce went into effect.

Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, said it had lost contact with its resistance fighters in Rafah, which was largely destroyed and taken over by Israeli forces during the genocide.

Approximately 200 Palestinian resistance fighters are thought to remain trapped within the city’s underground tunnel network. Israeli extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich claimed this week that Israel is “close to killing” the 200 trapped resistance fighters, after reports indicated Tel Aviv had rejected proposals for their safe passage.

Reports also suggest that the United States is attempting to persuade Israel to allow the fighters to surrender their weapons to a third party – Egypt, Qatar or Turkey – in exchange for amnesty.

An American official told Axios news that Israel “needs to grow up” and not let a “tactical” issue undermine the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

Since October 2023, Israeli shelling and airstrikes have continued to level Palestinian homes, hospitals, and water networks all across Gaza, leaving the Palestinian territories’ infrastructure in ruins. Gaza’s Health Ministry puts the death toll of the Israeli genocidal war at over 68,875.

The US-brokered ceasefire came into effect on 10th October. However, the Israelis have committed more than 200 violations of the ceasefire agreement, according to the director of Gaza’s Government Media Office.