Busy Gaza Morgue Performs Muslim Burial Rituals

BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip (AP) — In the morgue at a small Gaza hospital, the anguished cries of those who lost loved ones in Israeli airstrikes fell silent Thursday when Ahmed Jadallah began attending to the corpses, one by one, on his wooden work table. With swift, steady movements, Jadallah swaddled a toddler in a white burial shroud and later gently cleaned the soot-stained face of the child's father — Islamic rituals that momentarily reassured the grieving. Father and son had been killed earlier in the day, along with the child's grandparents and uncle, when an airstrike on an adjacent house sent debris flying into the family's living room. Nearly 790 Palestinians have been killed, including 190 children, and close to 5,000 wounded in more than two weeks of battle between Israel and Gaza's Hamas militants, according to Palestinian health officials. Jadallah's life mirrors the area's turbulent history: the 1948 Mideast war over Israel's creation; the Israeli capture of Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1967; two Palestinian uprisings, one starting in 1987 and one in 2000; the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007; and three rounds of Israel-Hamas fighting in 2008-09, in 2012 and now, in an outbreak that began July 8. Under Islamic rules, those who die a natural death are usually washed before burial, while those killed in a holy war are buried as they are, even if bloody, reflecting the idea that they are already pure enough to return to God. Israel has said it is striking Hamas targets in Gaza to harm the militant group's ability launch attacks at Israel, whether by firing rockets or sending infiltrators through tunnels.

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