Ahmed al Madhoun was a cheeky, chunky little fellow with an exuberant smile, a guy who loved life despite the hardship. His mother Majdiya, from her partially destroyed home in Gaza City, shows us videos of him cuddling a kitten, squealing with glee, belly-flopping into a swimming pool, emerging grinning from ear to ear. 'Everyone was his friend,' she tells the BBC. 'He was loved wherever he went.'
But Ahmed, who has Down's syndrome, vanished in May 2025 after popping to the local shop, during Israeli strikes in the area. Majdiya fears he's dead, but she doesn't know for certain. 'My God, I am not at peace,' she says. 'I have not lost hope but whether they find him alive or dead, buried under the rubble, only then will I be at peace.'
Pain like Majdiya's is felt by mothers all over Gaza. More than 73,000 people have been killed since Israel launched its military campaign, including about 1,200 since a ceasefire was announced last October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry - figures the UN considers reliable and Israeli media reported that a senior Israeli security source said the military accepts as accurate. But the true number could be higher; the health ministry's toll doesn't count bodies buried under the rubble, so many missing aren't in the count. The Red Cross has received over 5,000 requests to trace missing people, while Gaza's Civil Defence agency believes the missing number over 8,000.
Bodies are discovered daily. Earlier this month, a mass funeral in Gaza City buried more than a hundred people killed in an Israeli attack in 2023, their remains only recently recovered and identified. The Red Cross says recovering bodies is tough given the scale of destruction and a lack of bulldozers. Identifying remains is also hard when people have been dead for so long, and DNA testing is limited due to Israeli restrictions on what enters Gaza.
Ahmed's family knows he may have been killed, but they also fear he may have been detained by Israeli forces. Over nearly three years of war, Israeli forces have detained approximately 7,000 Palestinians from Gaza, more than 5,000 of whom were later released without ever being charged, according to the Israel-based Public Committee Against Torture. As of this month, around 1,300 Gaza detainees were held in Israeli jails without charge or trial, according to HaMoked, which notes these figures exclude those held directly by the military. Families have frequently not been notified of arrests or whereabouts, forcing them to rely on NGOs and lawyers. The BBC asked the IDF and Israel Prison Service (IPS) about their failure to contact relatives; Israeli authorities have previously said prolonged detentions were due to wartime security grounds and rejected claims they're arbitrary.
Then there's Aida al Drimli from Sabra district, showing a picture of her son Mahmoud, a fresh-faced young man in a Palestinian scarf. 'He was a calm well-mannered young man,' she says. 'He loved everyone and everyone loved him.' Mahmoud disappeared in 2024; his family feared he was killed in an attack. 'His father would go to the hospitals and look at the bodies,' Aida says. 'But I couldn't face it.' Then this summer, a photo emerged on social media showing two Israeli soldiers posing with a blindfolded, bound Palestinian detainee. Aida sees her son in him: 'From his features, from his forehead, his mouth, his nose, the way he sits... He has the exact same features as my son.' But with only a single photo, she can't be sure. 'When my husband showed me the photo, I was relieved,' she says. 'But at the same time, I was very upset and my heart was broken when I saw my son looking like that. It was humiliating.'
Both families say neither they nor their sons have any affiliation with Hamas or militant groups. The BBC asked the IPS about both men; they said they had no record of holding either. The Israeli military, which also runs detention centres, did not respond. Israel doesn't allow international journalists independent access to Gaza. The al Drimli family asked the Red Cross to find out if Mahmoud has been detained, but Israel doesn't allow the Red Cross access to its prison records.
Tal Steiner, an Israeli lawyer who works to locate Palestinians possibly detained, says 'Oct 7th changed everything.' 'The ban on the International Red Cross [visiting prisons] and the fact that the ICRC itself holds no lists of people held by Israel means we have to trace them individually one by one, per request by their families. It's a big strain on the ability to find those people, today.' For families, it's the not knowing that's hardest. 'It's an open wound. It doesn't heal. They have no rest not even knowing if their relative is dead or alive.' And over the last three years, Israel has made it much more difficult to trace possible detainees. 'To those not knowing where their family members are, that really adds insult to injury. It's a very difficult mental situation that can be carried for months and years.'