decomposed

The county's medical examiner previously said Ms Rivas Hernandez's body was "severely decomposed" when it was found in September and deferred making a ruling on how she died pending the death investigation.

“You have an instant fatality that leaves no marks on the skeletal remains. Unfortunately, the soft tissues that would show us what happened have decomposed in the past hundred years.”

The scent of a body varies depending on a person's body fat, he said, even if they have decomposed for the same amount of time.

He described thousands of bodies lying in front of houses and "the smell of gas and decomposed bodies".

Photographs released by Gaza's medical authorities show some of the bodies badly decomposed, and arriving in civilian clothes or naked except for underwear, some with multiple signs of injury.