UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Tuesday, 15 September 2026, called for international investigators to be allowed access to all parts of the Gaza Strip to help collect evidence, document sites where remains were found and identify victims, after the UN announced that hundreds of bodies and human remains had been recovered from beneath the rubble.
Estimates of the missing and families’ right to know
The UN estimates that more than 8,000 missing people remain under the rubble in the Gaza Strip. Türk said that in some cases, the recovered remains belonged to “entire families,” warning that what has been uncovered so far may be only “the tip of the iceberg,” given the existence of vast areas that have been completely destroyed. Türk stressed that families’ right to know the fate of their relatives is not limited to finding and burying the remains, but includes knowing what happened.
He called for forensic evidence, biological samples and the locations where bodies were found to be documented before operations begin that could remove the remaining traces. The UN commissioner said the discovery of the remains had revived concerns raised in a 2024 UN report about possible violations of international humanitarian law during attacks on residential buildings and civilian sites.
Numbers of recovered bodies and restrictions on rubble removal
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said Israel was refusing to allow in the heavy equipment needed to remove the rubble. The Palestinian Civil Defense said it had recovered the bodies and remains of more than 630 people from beneath destroyed buildings across the Gaza Strip since November 2025. Between 27 June and 27 August, its teams recovered 233 bodies from the rubble of 20 buildings, mostly in Gaza City, including the bodies of 74 children and 106 women.
The UN warns that removing the rubble before examining it could result in the loss of evidence that might help determine how the victims were killed. Israel denies deliberately targeting civilians and says it seeks to avoid civilian casualties during its operations against Hamas, accusing the group of using densely populated areas as human shields, a charge Hamas denies.
