Israel has destroyed a cemetery in Gaza containing the remains of 22 Canadian soldiers killed in the first UN peacekeeping initiative in 1956.
“It’s like there’s no headstones anymore,” Lia Bons, whose brother Adriann is buried in the cemetery, told CBC News on Wednesday. “It just looks like dirt, gravel, sand.”
An Israeli military officer admitted that soldiers from a brigade combat team dug 20 to 30 metres beneath the cemetery in February to destroy a Hamas tunnel. No measures were taken to protect the soldiers’ remains because the operation was conducted under combat conditions.
The Gaza War Cemetery, in Gaza City’s Tuffah district, has been repeatedly damaged during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, CBC reported.
The Canadian soldiers buried there were killed during the first UN peacekeeping operation, launched after Israel’s invasion of Egypt in 1956. They are the last Canadian soldiers to be interred overseas.
Seeking to repatriate the remains
Israeli forces have destroyed headstones, used earthmoving equipment inside the cemetery and located tanks around the cemetery.
Families of those buried there want the Canadian government to do more to safeguard the remains, and some want the government to bring home the remains.
Marguerite Picard wants her brother Paul’s remains returned so he can be buried beside their parents.
“I’m quite certain that my parents would want my brother to be repatriated,” she said. “I would put him next to mom and dad, and have his name written on the headstone, so that people know he’s there.”
