Hamas has said Israel’s blocking of heavy machinery entering Gaza to clear rubble caused by fighting is affecting efforts to extract the bodies of hostages, AFP reports.

“Preventing the entry of heavy equipment and machinery needed to remove 55 million tons of rubble … will undoubtedly affect the resistance’s ability to extract from under the rubble the dead prisoners (hostages),” Salama Marouf, spokesman for Hamas’s media office in Gaza, told journalists.