11 hours agoShareSaveLucy WilliamsonMiddle East correspondent, in JerusalemShareSaveAFPOut of a single room, with no DNA testing facilities or cold storage units of its own, the forensics team at Gaza’s Nasser hospital face the challenges brought by peace.Over the past eleven days, 195 bodies have been returned to Gaza by Israeli authorities, in exchange for the bodies of 13 Israeli hostages, under the terms of Donald Trump’s ceasefire deal. Two other bodies – those of Nepalese and Thai hostages – have also been returned by Hamas.Photographs released by Gaza’s medical authorities show some of the bodies badly decomposed, and arriving in civilian clothes or naked except for underwear, some with multiple signs of injury. Many have their wrists tied behind their backs, and doctors say some bodies arrived blindfolded or with cloth roped around their necks.The forensic team at Nasser hospital are working with almost no resources to answer vast questions about torture, mistreatment and identity.The head of the unit, Dr Ahmed Dheir, said one of their biggest limitations is a lack of cold storage space. The bodies arrive in Gaza thoroughly frozen and can take several days to thaw out, ruling out even basic identification methods like dental history, let alone any deeper investigation or post-mortem (autopsy).”The situation is extremely challenging,” he said. “If we wait for the bodies to thaw, rapid decomposition begins almost immediately, putting us in an impossible position [because] we lose the ability to examine the remains properly. So the most viable method is to take samples and document the state of the bodies as they are.”The BBC has viewed dozens of photographs of the bodies, many of them shared by Gaza’s health authorities, others taken by colleagues on the ground.We spoke to several of those involved in examining the bodies in Gaza, as well as families of the missing, human rights groups, and Israeli military and prison authorities.We also spoke to three forensic experts outside the region, including one specialising in torture, to educate ourselves about the medical processes involved in this kind of investigation – all agreed that there were questions that were difficult to answer without post-mortems.Dr Alaa al-Astal, one of the forensic team at Nasser hospital, said some of the bodies arriving there showed “signs of torture”, such as bruises and marks from binding on the wrists and ankles.”There were extremely horrific cases, where the restraint was so tight that blood circulation to the hands was cut off, leading to tissue damage and clear signs of pressure around the wrists and ankles,” he said.”Even around the eyes, when the blindfolds were removed, you could see deep grooves – imagine how much force that took. The pressure left actual marks where the blindfold had been tied.”Dr Astal also mentioned the loose cloths tied around the necks of some bodies as needing further investigation.”In one case, there was a groove around the neck,” he said. “To determine whether the death was due to hanging or strangulation, we needed to perform a post-mortem, but because the body was frozen, it was not dissected.”Sameh Yassin Hamad, a member of the Hamas-run government committee responsible for receiving the bodies, said there were signs of bruising and blood infiltration indicating that the bodies had been severely beaten before death. He also said there were stab wounds on the chest or face of some of them.Some of the images we saw from the unit clearly show deep indentations or tightly-fastened cable-ties on the wrists and arms and ankles. One photograph appears to show the bruising and abrasion that would confirm that ties had been used while the person was still alive.Other bodies showed only deep indentation marks, meaning a post-mortem would be needed to determine whether the ties had been used before or after death. Cable-ties are sometimes used when transporting bodies in Israel.When we asked Israel’s military about the evidence we gathered, it said it operates strictly in accordance with international law.We showed the phot …
