The corpses of Palestinians are being tossed into ice-cream trucks for storage as hospitals and cemeteries are falling short on space during the raging war between Israel and Hamas, health officials said.
Horrifying images from Gaza capture the surreal scene of medical personnel loading the commercial ice-cream trucks — with ads on them for the chilly goodies and featuring happy kiddie faces — repurposed to hold the bodies of Palestinians killed in the war.
“The hospital morgue can only take 10 bodies, so we have brought in ice-cream freezers from the ice-cream factories in order to store the huge numbers of martyrs,” said Dr. Yasser Ali of the Shuhada Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir Al-Balah.
Health officials in Gaza said Israel’s retaliatory air strikes against the Hamas terrorists have killed more than 2,300 people so far, about a quarter of them children.
Another 10,000 people have been wounded in the Palestine territory, with hospitals struggling to handle the growing number of casualties.
As the conflict continues to become ever more violent, with Israel warning hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to evacuate Gaza ahead of an expected ground invasion to destroy Hamas, health officials fear the number of civilian casualties will only grow.
Ali noted that even with the makeshift mobile morgues, Gaza will soon run out of means to transport the bodies of the dead.
“Even with these freezers, the number [of the dead] exceeds the capacity of this main morgue of the hospital and alternative ones, and between 20 and 30 bodies are being kept in tents, too,” Ali said.
“The Gaza Strip is in crisis, and if the war continues in this way, we will not be able to bury the dead. The cemeteries are already full, and we need new ones to bury the dead,” he added.
With the war threatening the more than 2 million people who call Gaza their home as Israel counts down the evacuation window, Palestinian officials have revealed that they are now creating mass graves for the casualties.
“In light of the large number of martyrs inside the morgues of Al-Shifa Hospital, whose relatives did not arrive to bury them, signs of change began to appear on the bodies,” said Salama Marouf, head of the Government Media Office.
“And in light of the continued arrival of martyrs in their dozens as a result of the occupation’s massacres, a mass grave has been prepared to bury approximately 100 martyrs in the emergency cemetery.”
The Israeli government has repeatedly vowed vengeance against the Hamas terrorists who govern Gaza after the terror group invaded Israel in a surprise attack last week and slaughtered about 1,300 people.
Among the dead are at least 29 Americans, while a minimum of 15 remain missing as Hamas also kidnapped more than 150 people during its unprecedented attack.
With Post wires