Unexploded bombs littering Gaza threaten recovery for decades, UN warns

War-torn Gaza is heavily contaminated by unexploded ordnance, which frequently kill and maim people and could threaten recovery efforts far into the future, the UN said Friday.

Unexploded ordnance, ranging from undetonated bombs or grenades to simple bullets, has become a common sight in the Gaza Strip since the start of Israel's war in the Palestinian territory, sparked by Hamas's unprecedented attack on October 7, 2023.

The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) said it had data suggesting that since the start of the conflict, more than 1,000 people had been killed in Gaza due to "indirect conflict", from the remnants of war.

Julius Van der Walt, UNMAS chief in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, stressed that that number was certainly a severe under-estimate.

Half of the known casualties were children, he told reporters in Geneva.

Speaking along side him at a press conference on mine action work worldwide, Narmina Strishenets of Save the Children UK, also highlighted the heavy toll on youngsters.

A report by the organisation published last year found that in 2024, the use of explosive weapons in Gaza left an average of 475 children each month with potentially lifelong disabilities, including amputations.

Today, Strishenets said, Gaza has "the largest cohort of child amputees" in the world.

- 'High density' -

Van der Walt said UNMAS had so far been unable to conduct an extensive survey of the full scope of the problem, but "the evidence already suggests a high density of explosive ordnance contamination across the Gaza Strip".

So far, UNMAS had identified "more than 1,000 items of explosive ordnance", during missions conducted over the past 2.5 years.

Compared to Gaza's small geographic size, that means there is about one piece of explosive ordnance "every 600 metres", he pointed out.

And those are only the items that have been found.

"We have barely scratched the surface in understanding what is the level of contamination," he acknowledged.

Adding to the danger was Gaza's very high population density.

Prior to the conflict, Gaza was one already of the most densely-populated places on Earth, with around 6,000 people per square kilometre, Van der Walt said, pointing out that the war had effectively halved the space available, and doubled the density.

"Explosive weapons are being used all across the territories, including in densely-populated refugee camps," he said, pointing to a recent case where explosive ordnance was found inside a tent where people had been living for several weeks.

At the same time, "humanitarian convoys risk detonation as they travel throughout the Gaza Strip, and early recovery efforts are essentially stalled before they can even begin", he said.

- $541 million -

Van der Walt pointed to an assessment that, in a best case scenario, it will cost around $541 million to address the explosive ordnance threat, if all necessary permissions are granted and the equipment required is accessible.

He warned that the contamination, including within mountains of debris, was so vast and so varied, that it was "very close to impossible to ... do a full assessment", and that ordnance would likely remain a problem for decades to come.

He pointed to the World War II bombs that continue to be discovered during construction projects in Britain.

"We can anticipate something along those lines" in Gaza, he said.