5-year-old Masa has been missing for more than a year. Hope arrives when a small, patent leather shoe is found

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It was early in the morning when Mu’ayyad Ajjour and his neighbour Mohamed Zaida set up for the day’s search in Gaza City. Since the recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began in October, the two have been looking for the remains of Ajjour’s five-year-old cousin, Masa, under the rubble of the building in which she and family were sheltering. 

Ajjour, 37, tied ropes on the handles of a black mixing dish while Zaida, 17, crawled into a deep chasm in the rubble that he had dug. The meagre tools they had at hand were fashioned into a pulley system. This had become their routine: Zaida would pull the bowl down the tunnel on the rope toward him, fill it with debris, then call to Ajjour to pull it out and sift through it using a fan cover. 

The air was silent, save for the sounds of the bowl slowly dragging over the rubble. The three-storey building, hit by an airstrike in March 2024, stood lopsided and blown out above Zaida. His makeshift tunnel, held up by stacks of concrete blocks, was unstable and threatened to fall at any moment. But he persisted, hoping to find any sign of the child’s remains.

Masa’s body is just one of thousands thought to be hidden under the rubble of crushed buildings across the strip after two years of war. As the fragile ceasefire holds in Gaza, loved ones are trying to locate them with whatever tools they can find so they can bury them properly.

Using meagre tools, the duo comes in daily to the site and continues digging, hoping they will find any sign of Masa in the midst of the rubble. (Mohamed El Saife/CBC News)Thousands under rubble

In March 2024, Masa and her family were sheltering in a residential building when it was raided, then bombed, the men told CBC’s freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife. Masa, her father and mother were shot, they said. The whereabouts of her father, who was shot three times, are unknown. Her mother, who was pregnant at the time, is recovering from injuries nearby at Al-Shifa hospital. The baby did not survive. 

Masa hasn’t been seen since then, and Ajjour and Zaida suspect her body lies under the rubble.

“We are looking for anything…. A skull, a backbone or a pelvis,” Zaida said. “This is what survives after a year and a half.” 

The two have been searching for Masa's remains in the rubble of the building she was sheltering in with her family. (Mohamed El Saife/CBC News)

The two said they have worked in the area from seven in the morning until sunset every day. They’ve made little progress, which they said is because they lack the proper tools.

“The only distance we’ve gone is seven metres,” said Ajjour.

Using the fan lid, Ajjour sifted through the latest pile of rubble Zaida had sent back to him, slowly revealing a white patent leather shoe. He took a moment to look at it, turning it over in his hand, as he realized it might have belonged to Masa.

Ajjour holds the white shoe he believes belonged to his cousin. He says he will continue digging until he finds Masa, so he can give her a proper resting place. (Mohamed El Saife/CBC News)

“Hammood, where did you get this from? Focus on the same area,” he called to Zaida, using a nickname for him. 

Ajjour wiped dust off the shoe’s sole and placed it on the edge of a cement block that once held up the building in front of him. 

“This gives us hope to look,” he said, “not to stop and not to lose hope.”

Aid, heavy machinery not getting in

At least 11,000 bodies are estimated to still be buried under the rubble across Gaza, the United Nations said in April. At the time, airstrikes had halted waste and debris removal operations. 

The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when a Hamas-led attack killed some 1,200 people in Israel and took another 250 hostage. Israel’s subsequent military offensive in Gaza has killed more than 69,000 Palestinians.

Last month, the UN Development Program began removing rubble in Gaza City, aiming to restore access to essential services. It said diggers and other vehicles have been deployed to Al-Jala street to work around the clock to reopen roads. Given an estimated 55 million to 60 million tonnes of rubble remain, it may take years to complete, the organization said. 

In a post to its WhatsApp group on Thursday, the Gaza Health Ministry said many bodies still remain under the rubble, though it did not provide a specific estimate. It said that people reported hearing sounds from under the ruins, but that ambulance and civil defence teams still couldn’t reach the victims.

Zaida, pictured here, and Ajjour have been working daily trying to locate her remains. Ajjour said Masa is like a daughter to him. (Mohamed El Saife/CBC News)

Back in Gaza City, at the end of the day, Zaida crawled out of the tunnel. The two sat on a nearby ledge, dripping in sweat and covered in dust, examining the white shoe. 

“I don’t want anything. I don’t want clothes or anything,” said Ajjour. “I just want to bury the child based on God’s decree. The girl was five years old. What did she do wrong? What did she do to deserve being under a building, three floors?”

He said he and Zaida will continue digging slowly every day until they find her. 

“God decrees that we not abandon her,” said Ajjour. “I consider her like my daughter.”