Ahmed Al-Madhoun, like any young man, seemed to be in love and embracing life despite everything he had been through. He was plump, fun-loving, and had a bright smile.
From her partially destroyed home in Gaza City, his mother, Majdia, showed us videos of him on her phone.
In one of the videos, Ahmed appears petting a small cat, sticking out his tongue and screaming with joy. In another, he jumps on his stomach into the pool, then emerges from the water with a broad smile.
“Everyone was his friend,” Majdia told the BBC. "He was loved wherever he went, and a smile never left his face."
But Ahmed, who has Down syndrome, is currently missing. Ahmed, 21, disappeared in May 2025 after going to a store near his home.
The war in Gaza was still raging between Hamas and Israel, at that time.
During the day he went missing, Israel launched air strikes in the area, and his mother, Majdiya, fears he may have been killed. But she's not so sure about that.
She says, "Oh my God, I am not reassured. I have not lost hope, but I will only feel comfortable when they find him, whether he is alive or dead, or even buried under the rubble."
Mothers across Gaza are feeling similar pain to Majidah.
More than 73,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military campaign, including about 1,200 people since a ceasefire was declared in October 2025, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the Strip. These are numbers that the United Nations considers reliable.
Israeli media reported in January that a high-ranking Israeli security source said the army acknowledged the accuracy of these numbers.
But the real number of Palestinian deaths may be much higher, as the Ministry of Health statistics do not include bodies buried under the rubble, which means that many of the missing are not included in this census.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says it has received more than 5,000 requests to search for missing persons possibly buried under the rubble. The Gaza Civil Defense Authority believes that the number of missing people exceeds 8,000 people.
Bodies are still being discovered on a daily basis.
Earlier this month, a mass funeral was held in Gaza City for more than a hundred people killed in an Israeli attack in 2023. Their remains were only recently recovered and identified, allowing them to be buried.
The Red Cross says that recovering bodies is extremely difficult due to the extent of the destruction and the lack of bulldozers.
In many cases, identifying remains is also complicated, especially long after death, coupled with a lack of DNA testing, due to Israeli restrictions on what can enter Gaza.
Ahmed Al-Madhoun's family knows that he may have been killed, but they also fear that he may have been arrested by Israeli security forces.
Over the course of nearly three years of war, Israeli forces arrested about seven thousand Palestinians from Gaza, and more than five thousand of them were later released without any charges being brought against them, according to the Israel-based General Committee against Torture.
As of this month, about 1,300 Gazan detainees were being held in Israeli prisons without charge or trial, according to the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked. The organization says that these numbers do not include detainees from Gaza, who are directly detained by Israeli forces.
According to HaMoked and other human rights organizations, Palestinian families are often not notified by Israel of the arrest of their relatives or their whereabouts, forcing many to rely on NGOs and lawyers to help track them down.
The BBC asked the Israeli Army and the Israeli Prison Service about reports that they allegedly failed to inform detainees' families of the fate of their relatives.
Israeli authorities have previously stated that the prolonged detention operations are due to wartime security reasons, and have rejected allegations that the detention operations are arbitrary.
From the Al-Sabra neighborhood in Gaza City, Aida Al-Darmili shows us a picture of her son Mahmoud, a young man with fresh features and a keffiyeh wrapped around his neck.
Aida says, "He was a quiet young man with good behavior. He loved everyone and everyone loved him."
But Mahmoud disappeared in 2024. His family feared he had been killed in an Israeli attack.
“His father used to go to hospitals and look at corpses,” Aida says. “But I couldn’t face that. I was completely broken.”
But this summer, a photo appeared on social media showing two Israeli soldiers standing with a blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian detainee.
Aida confirms that Mahmoud is the one in the picture.
She says, "From his features, from his forehead, his mouth, his nose, the way he sits, the way he closes his mouth, his hands, and his legs from below. He has exactly the same features as my son."
But she knows that one picture is not enough to confirm that.
“When my husband sat down and showed me the picture, I felt relieved,” she says. “But at the same time, I was very upset and heartbroken when I saw my son like that. It was humiliating.”
Both the Darmeli family and the Madhoun family confirm that neither they nor their children belong to Hamas or any of the armed groups in Gaza.
When the BBC asked the Israeli Prison Service about the two young men, it responded that it had no record of detaining either of them.
When the same question was directed to the Israeli army, which also runs detention centers and prisons, no response was provided.
"It's an open wound. It doesn't heal. They can't find relief and they don't even know if their relative is alive or dead," she explains.
She says that over the past three years, Israel has made tracking down Palestinians potentially in its custody much more difficult.
