GAZA CITY — Eight-year-old Joud Ahmad Al-Angar and his 12-year-old cousin, Zain Nour, thought they had found a useful haul amid the rubble: a bucket of small black pellets. The boys were told to bring it home; when adults insisted they return it, Joud tossed the container back and it detonated.
Phone footage circulated with reporters shows the boys stumbling from the blast, bleeding and screaming. Zain’s father, Mohammad Nour, says both children were thrown by the explosion; he found his son hung on a fence and both boys with shrapnel embedded in their bodies.
At Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City they share a bed in an overcrowded ward. Their faces are dust-coated, skin stained with blast residue. Small scabs from pellet shrapnel dot their limbs; larger wounds leak. Joud’s scalp required stitches. Mohammad Nour said the hospital initially lacked painkillers and enough surgeons, and with many medical staff gone from northern Gaza they are still awaiting operations to remove remaining fragments.
The incident underscores a wider and growing danger across the territory: unexploded ordnance (UXO). United Nations Mine Action Service estimates that 5 to 10 percent of weapons fired into Gaza over the past two years failed to detonate, leaving a deadly legacy of unexploded munitions. UN-linked tallies attribute at least 328 deaths to such devices, including 24 since a ceasefire took effect on Oct. 10.
“We receive daily calls from citizens reporting unexploded bombs,” says Mahmoud Basal, a spokesperson for Gaza Civil Defense. “They’re in buildings, under buildings, on roofs, and on the roads — missiles, drone munitions, bombs. The list goes on.” Basal estimates there are tens of thousands of tons of unexploded ordnance across Gaza and notes that many of the trained bomb-disposal personnel who could help have been killed.
Humanitarian demining teams warn clearing UXO in Gaza presents exceptional challenges. Nick Orr, chief of operations for the nonprofit Humanity and Inclusion, says the population density and destruction complicate every clearance step. Each device requires an exclusion zone and evacuation; in Gaza City, an 800-meter cordon around some ordnance would be needed, he says, a distance impossible to secure without safe, empty areas to move people to.
“It’s biblical,” Orr says of the devastation, comparing current scenes to historic postwar ruins. He warns that comprehensive clearance may take decades: surface clearance could require 20 to 30 years, and items will likely be uncovered for generations.
Before large-scale clearance can begin, Orr says, Gaza needs an internal security capacity able to manage evacuations while teams dismantle devices. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire plan contemplates formation of an international stabilization force to help with security and reconstruction, but that would take months to assemble. In the meantime, Orr says a “patchwork” approach is likely — small teams moving into areas, issuing evacuation notices and clearing zones — a process that will force more internal displacement unless safe relocation options exist.
An off-the-record senior Gaza interior ministry official told reporters that under elements of the ceasefire plan, unexploded ordnance is sometimes being treated as part of efforts to neutralize weapons tied to armed groups because munitions are sometimes recycled. That official alleged Israeli forces have targeted civilians attempting to handle unexploded devices. They also said Israel and Hamas had agreed to let Egyptian teams take part in cleanup efforts; an Israeli military spokesperson declined to comment to reporters.
For many families, life continues amid the hazards. Tents are pitched beside ruined structures and, in some cases, next to unexploded munitions. Scavenging bombed sites for salvageable materials has become widespread as people who lost homes and incomes try to survive. The Gaza Health Ministry reports more than 64,000 children have been killed or injured over the past two years.
Joud and Zain say their experience has hardened their caution. “We are now too scared to go poking around near bombed-out buildings,” Joud says, his face rimmed with scabs and stitches. “Next time we will stay far, far away.”
Reporting from Gaza City by Anas Baba; Tel Aviv by Rob Schmitz; additional reporting from Cairo by Ahmed Abuhamda and Beirut by Jawak Rizkallah.