archeology at the service of body identification

Five kilometers from the Gaza Strip, more than 600 carcasses of burned vehicles are gathered, left there by the Israeli army. The charred pieces of sheet metal are collected, car by car, then scrupulously passed through a sieve. Avi Grinberg just found a piece of bone, no bigger than a fingernail. “Yes, it’s a bone, you can see it by the shape and texture”he assures.

He is an archaeologist, but works on the October 7 attacks. Because it is a world first: in Israel, the army called on archaeologists to look for bones and traces of DNA on huge open-air crime scenes. The objective is to successfully identify the victims. So, on the site of the rave party, in the kibbutzim or on the roads around Gaza, there are 15 of them working to recover bones in the middle of charred debris.

“It’s really painstaking work.testifies Avi Grinberg, responsible for identifying the bodies. At the feast of Reim, there was a burned ambulance with twelve bodies inside. From morning to evening we worked only on this vehicle. And we were able to match the identities of the owners of this ambulance with the remains of the bodies that we identified.”

“I’ve been doing this job for 30 years and this work has taken on its full meaning over the last two weeks. It’s like a mission!”

Moshe Admi, deputy director of the Antiquities Authority, specialist in biblical archeology

at franceinfo

One tooth is enough

More than 40 victims of the October 7 attacks are still missing today, including 9 French people. So, the fifteen archaeologists have been working tirelessly for two weeks on these crime scenes. “We are able to make an identification based on a single tooth”explains Moshe Admi, deputy director of the Antiquities Authority, specialist in biblical archaeology. “The terrorists burned people. They tied them together, then set them on firehe says. This poses a problem for us because we have to separate the bones. We also find jewelry, screws, plates. These are clues.”

“Each mother who learns what happened to her child, even if dead, is essential!”assures Moshe Admi. “This is the first time in history that archaeologists have worked to identify bodies. I hope it will be the last”, he whispers. Archaeologists have already found 50 bodies. Only around fifteen have so far been identified.