RAMALLAH, October 13, 2016 (WAFA) – Palestinians Thursday petitioned the Israeli High Court to retrieve bodies of Palestinians that Israel had been holding for decades.

The Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC) petitioned the court on behalf of the National Campaign for Retrieving the Bodies of Martyrs (NCRBM) demanding that Israeli military hand over the bodies of 52 Palestinians buried in what is known as “numbers cemetery” for decades.

The campaign said in a press statement that it would submit a petition to the court within the coming days demanding that the military releases 70 bodies, including the bodies of 19 Palestinians killed in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel since April.

The campaign said it had successfully pressured Israel to release the bodies of 131 Palestinians between 2010 and 2014 and pledged to exert efforts to secure the release of all remaining corpses.

Israel has continued to hold the bodies of Palestinians and Arabs killed during the last decades in two facilities known as the ‘numbers cemeteries” because it identifies the graves by numbers only. One is located in the northern Israeli area of Galilee, where reportedly 243 bodies were held, and the second in the Jordan Valley where 92 bodies were kept.

Israeli government designates the cemeteries as closed military zones and denies Palestinians and Arabs access into them.

K.F./M.A.