As Gaza toll crosses 40,000, corpses are buried in yards and tiered graves

Gaza cemetery struggles to accommodate the overwhelming death toll from the Israel-Hamas war

Tiers of graves are stacked deep underground in a bloated Gaza cemetery, where Sa’di Baraka spends his days hacking at the earth, making room for more dead.

“Sometimes we make graves on top of graves,” he said.

Mr. Baraka and his solemn corps of volunteer gravediggers in the Deir al-Balah cemetery start at sunrise, digging new trenches or reopening existing ones. The dead can sometimes come from kilometres (miles) away, stretches of Gaza where burial grounds are destroyed or unreachable.

The cemetery is 70 years old. A quarter of its graves are new.

The death toll in Gaza since the beginning of the 10-month-old Israel-Hamas war has passed 40,000, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The small, densely populated strip of land is now packed with bodies.

They fill morgues and overflow cemeteries. Families, fleeing repeatedly to escape offensives, bury their dead wherever possible: in backyards and parking lots, beneath staircases, and along roadsides, according to witness accounts and video footage. Others lie under rubble, their families unsure they will ever be counted.