In her partially destroyed home in Gaza City, Majdiya al Madhoun shows videos of her son Ahmed. In one, Ahmed is cuddling a kitten, sticking out his tongue and squealing with glee. In another, he belly flops into a swimming pool, emerging grinning from ear to ear. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.
Ahmed, who has Down's syndrome, is missing. The 21-year-old disappeared in May 2025 after popping to the local shop. That day there were Israeli strikes in the area, and Majdiya fears her son is dead, but she doesn't know for certain. "My God, I am not at peace," she says. "I have not lost hope but whether they find him alive or dead, buried under the rubble, only then will I be at peace."
Pain like Majdiya's is felt by mothers all over Gaza. More than 73,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military campaign, including about 1,200 since a ceasefire was announced last October, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry - figures considered reliable by the UN. Israeli media reported in January that a senior Israeli security source said the military accepts the figures are accurate.
But the true number of dead Palestinians could be significantly higher. The health ministry's death toll doesn't count bodies buried under the rubble, meaning many of the missing are not part of the count. The Red Cross says it has received more than 5,000 requests to trace missing people who could be buried amid the destruction. The Civil Defence agency in Gaza believes the number of missing people is over 8,000.
Bodies are being discovered on a daily basis. Earlier this month, a mass funeral took place in Gaza City for more than a hundred people killed in an Israeli attack in 2023. Their remains were only recently recovered and identified. The Red Cross says recovering bodies is difficult given the scale of the destruction and a lack of bulldozers. In many cases, identifying the remains is also challenging when people have been dead for so long and with a lack of DNA testing, due to Israeli restrictions on what can enter Gaza.
Ahmed al Madhoun's family knows he may well have been killed - but they also fear he may have been detained by Israeli security forces. Over almost three years of war, Israeli forces have detained approximately 7,000 Palestinians from Gaza, more than 5,000 of whom were later released without ever being charged, according to the Israel-based Public Committee Against Torture. As of this month, around 1,300 detainees from Gaza were being held in Israeli jails without charge or trial, according to the Israeli human rights group HaMoked. The group says these figures do not include Gaza detainees held directly by the Israeli military.
Palestinian families have frequently not been notified by Israel of the arrest or whereabouts of their relatives, according to HaMoked and other rights groups. The BBC has asked the IDF and Israel Prison Service about their reported failure to contact relatives of those they have detained. Israeli authorities have previously said prolonged detentions were due to wartime security grounds and rejected claims that detentions are arbitrary.
Aida al Drimli from the Sabra district of Gaza City shows a picture of her son, Mahmoud. "He was a calm well-mannered young man," Aida says. "He loved everyone and everyone loved him." Mahmoud disappeared in 2024. His family feared he had been killed in an Israeli attack. "His father would go to the hospitals and look at the bodies," Aida tells us. "But I couldn't face it. I was completely devastated."