Undated picture shows buildings destroyed in the city of Jabalia in central Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the launch of the Israeli genocide against the coastal sliver. (Photo by AFP)

The civil defense in the Gaza Strip says thousands of bodies are still buried beneath the ruins of destroyed buildings across the Palestinian territory, as rescue teams struggle to reach neighborhoods devastated during the Israeli regime`s war of genocide.

In a statement issued on Thursday, spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said around 8,000 bodies remained under the rubble, despite ongoing search and recovery efforts.

Civil defense crews were seen carrying out operations with heavy machinery at the site of a building destroyed during Israeli attacks in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City on February 12.

Basal said teams were operating under severe constraints. According to the statement, they were working in "very difficult conditions" and with limited resources, making it hard to access many affected areas.

The latest figures came as a leading humanitarian law institute has warned that the overall death toll from the war that began in October 2023 might be far higher than widely reported.

The Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights said the number of people killed in the coastal sliver might have exceeded 200,000. The assessment cited new data showing that the territory`s population had declined by more than 10 percent since the launch of the genocide.

Stuart Casey-Maslen, head of the Academy`s project on international humanitarian law, said such a sharp population drop suggested the tremendous loss. He stressed that commonly circulated casualty figures did not reflect the full scale of destruction.

Maslen described the situation as "extremely serious," warning that suffering continued even after a US-brokered ceasefire between the Gaza-headquartered Hamas resistance movement and Tel Aviv.

The two sides signed a deal in early October last year as part of a 20-point plan devised by Donald Trump that the US president claims is aimed at ending the genocide.

Israeli forces, though, have been found in daily deadly violation of the agreement ever since in, what observers have called, Tel Aviv`s efforts at continuing the genocidal pattern.