By Al-Fassel and AFP | 2023-11-14

In its search for the remains of the victims of Hamas's October 7 terrorist attack, Israel has turned to some unusual sources for help -- using birds of prey to locate corpses, and archaeologists to identify human remains.

Data from carrion-eating birds are helping the army locate corpses around sites of the massacre, according to a wildlife scholar involved in the project.

Eagles, vultures and other birds of prey fitted with tracking devices have played a role in the search for human remains, said Ohad Hatzofe of Israel's Nature and Parks Authority.

"When the war began, I was approached by some reservists serving in that unit," said Hatzofe. "They asked me if my birds could help with something."

The idea came from EITAN, a unit within the army's human resources branch that is responsible for locating missing soldiers.

Hatzofe heads a program that tracks endangered griffon vultures, which chiefly feed on dead animals, as well as eagles and other birds of prey that also eat carrion.

The program has tagged hundreds of birds with Global Positioning System (GPS) trackers to study their migratory patterns, feeding habits and environmental threats they face.

On October 23, one of them -- a rare sea eagle -- was found near Beeri, a kibbutz agricultural community just outside the Gaza strip.

"I sent my data" to the army, Hatzofe said. "They went to verify it and recovered four bodies," he said, unable to reveal more about the location or identities of the corpses.

When Hamas carried out its October 7 terrorist attack on Israel by land, air and sea, more than 1,400 people were killed, mostly civilians, and more than 200 were taken hostage.

In Beeri, 85 residents were killed and another 30 are missing or presumed to be among the hostages.

On Monday, 74-year-old Israeli-Canadian peace activist Vivian Silver, who had been missing since the October 7 attacks, was confirmed dead, "murdered by Hamas in Kibbutz Beeri," an Israeli diplomat in Toronto said.

Data from a second bird, a Bonelli's eagle, enabled the recovery of "other bodies inside Israel," said Hatzofe.

Israeli police said last week they had identified the bodies of 843 civilians and 351 soldiers in total. More than one month after the terrorist attack, dozens of others listed as missing have not been found or identified.

Archaeologists set to work

Meanwhile, Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) deputy director Moshe Ajami and a team of archaeologists have turned their skills to finding and identifying the victims of the October 7 terrorist attack.

Even though they are using the same techniques that their regular research requires, this is grim work.

"We needed to go into the burned houses and start doing the archaeological work, which ordinarily is in a pastoral [setting]: outdoors, we excavate antiquities, everyone smiling," said Ajami.

In the weeks following the terrorist attack, paramedics, police and Zaka, an Israeli organization specializing in collecting human remains, combed over the devastation in southern Israel's towns, cities and kibbutzim.

But the scope and scale of the massacre have presented a challenge in identifying the bodies of the dead, many of whom were set alight, and in locating those still missing.

"Someone in the army thought it was a good idea to invite the IAA, whose expertise is in finding partial human remains -- skeletons, including those that are burned," said Ajami.

Archaeologists were first called to Kfar Aza, a kibbutz bordering Gaza that Hamas attacked.

Sifting through soil and ash, they apply decades of experience in "how to identify the smallest fragment of bone in an archaeological excavation" to locate the remains of victims of the Hamas terrorists, Ajami said.

Sifting for teeth

Forensic archaeology rarely deals "with an ongoing, contemporary disaster," Ajami said.

Last Thursday (November 9), archaeologists and forensics teams scoured burnt out homes in Nir Oz, a kibbutz in southern Israel where a quarter of its 400 residents were killed, wounded or taken hostage to Gaza.

"We divide the house into several locations and start digging," said Ari Levy, an IAA archaeologist working at Nir Oz.

Incinerated cars and the rooms of torched homes are broken down into grids, with searchers sifting through debris for bone fragments and teeth. They meticulously document any sites with found remains.

"All these actions increase our possibility of identifying the remains and the findings we are looking for," said Levy.

Families are asked about metal implants and prosthetics or jewelry that might help identify remains. The emotional toll is heavy.

"We know who we're looking for; we know their faces in many cases, the names, the families, and the feeling here is... difficult, because we can't detach emotionally," Levy said.

Teeth are especially important "because you can extract DNA from them even when the skeleton is burned," said Ajami.

The remnants are documented and catalogued, then sent to an army facility in central Israel where forensics teams try to identify the person.

Of the roughly 60 people whose remains he and his team have found, at least 10 have been identified and laid to rest, Ajami said.

The IAA is also planning to use drones, lasers and other technology to generate high-resolution 3D images of the scenes of the terrorist attacks.

"I never believed I would have to do something like this, and I don't think anyone in the world thought that something like this would happen," Ajami said.

But after 30 years of field archaeology, "all of that knowledge that I've accumulated is all funneled into this mission."

"If we hadn't come and lent a hand there, they never would have found these people. It's a big privilege for me."