Before he fled his home in northern Gaza, where intense fighting now rages between Israel and Hamas, Mahmud al-Masri had a grim job to do: bury his three brothers and their five children in a nearby citrus orchard, AFP reports.

With his home area turned into a war zone, the bereaved 60-year-old farmer had no choice but to dig makeshift graves and hastily bid farewell to his relatives killed in an Israeli strike.

“We had to bury them there in the orchard because the cemetery is in the border zone where tanks are coming in, and it’s very dangerous,” Masri said. “I will transfer the bodies when the war is over.”

Most cemeteries are either full or inaccessible because of Israeli strikes, and so families of the dead have to improvise when burying their loved ones.

When dozens of people were killed in a bombardment at the Jabalia refugee camp in early November, around 50 bodies were stacked up in the rear of a pick-up truck and taken to a local hospital.

From there they were transported, some in donkey-drawn carts, towards a cemetery for burial. But because of a lack of space there, relatives had to dig a communal mass grave at a dirt football field where local teams used to play, an AFP photographer said.