The neon-lit corridor, the acrid and pungent smell, the portholes on the doors from which you can see blue coats bent over the beds, the cold rooms swallowing dead. The silence is broken only by the buzzing of flies and the sound of stretchers carrying from one side to the other, in a mournful procession, the black bags of corpses, white if they are children's or what's left of them. There is an uninterrupted coming and going of bodies, dozens, hundreds, among the 1,400 victims of the brutal Hamas attack in southern Israel.
"This is the world of the dead," Dr. Chen Kugel, director of the National Center for Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv, the only one in the country, told ANSA, where about 950 bodies have been brought from the Shura military base so far, 297 still unnamed. "Only the most difficult cases come here. Our first task is to identify the victims, then to understand what happened to them, how they died. We need to give answers to the families who wonder if their loved ones are here or if they have ended up in Gaza as hostages. We owe it to him." It's not an easy task. "Sometimes we don't know how to answer, because we receive small remains, or charred pieces, mutilated and completely decomposed bodies. But we try to do our best," explains Dr. Kugel, who often interrupts, his eyes shining and a lump in his throat, despite his 31-year career.
In the morgue, every detail, every piece of bone is analyzed, DNA samples, fingerprints, dental arches are collected. A tattoo - "if still visible" - can also be helpful. "Some corpses had their wrists tied behind their backs with plastic ties, others had bullet holes in their hands because they tried to defend themselves," says the director of the Center, bringing his hands to his face to mimic the gesture.
The team of forensic doctors shows on a screen a photo of a shapeless, black mass, a charred and indistinguishable lump. The MRI image then reveals that it is two vertebral columns and two sets of ribs tangled together: "It's an adult hugging a child," Kugel explains. Their bodies are fused into each other, gripped in fear of what is about to happen and then happened: violence, death.
"We saw so many children killed: some were burned, some died in the flames, they had smoke in their windpipes," Dr. Kugel continues. Probably, the doctors explain, "they died of intoxication, not burned alive. We found no traces of fuel on the bodies. The families must at least know that they did not suffer that horror." Asked about the unconfirmed news of the "children beheaded" by Hamas, the director is categorical: "I have seen children without heads, but I don't know the cause. A bullet or missile can tear off your head. I'm not going to say that people were beheaded," he said.
It is a harrowing, very long job, to which forensic doctors, experts and volunteers of other nationalities have been working tirelessly for days. "We will take as long as it takes," said Dr. Nurit Bublil, a consultant to the Israeli army's DNA laboratory. But we will return the body of every Israeli, every soldier, every foreigner or tourist to their families. Everyone will be buried at home."
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