Gaza Herald_ As Gaza begins taking its first fragile steps after the ceasefire, international experts warn that Israel’s devastation continues to kill long after the bombs stop falling.
The Gaza Herald has repeatedly documented how the remnants of Israel’s two-year assault, unexploded ordnance, collapsed buildings, and contaminated neighborhoods have turned the strip into one of the most dangerous places in the world for children. Now, a senior UN official confirms what Palestinians have been living with daily: Gaza’s landscape has been transformed into a lethal maze, threatening every attempt to restore even a semblance of normal life.
Julius van der Walt, head of the UN Mine Action Program in the occupied Palestinian territory, said Wednesday that the remnants of war and unexploded ordnance represent a major obstacle to restoring normal life in the Gaza Strip.
Van der Walt stressed in press remarks that children are the most vulnerable group in the enclave.
He explained that unexploded ordnance poses an extreme danger to civilians, especially as hundreds of thousands of people move across Gaza following the ceasefire.
He noted that “more than two years of intense Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have left widespread contamination with explosive materials, negatively affecting the delivery of humanitarian aid, slowing the recovery of the enclave, and making reconstruction operations extremely dangerous in addition to posing a direct threat to civilian lives.”
The UN official also pointed out that there is no precise data on the full scale of explosive contamination in Gaza, but said there are strong indicators that it is widespread across most areas.
Van der Walt said the UN Mine Action Service has been operating in Gaza since October 2023, explaining: “Since then, we have been able to identify more than 650 hazardous items in the areas we have been able to access, the vast majority of them unexploded ordnance.”
He emphasized that avoiding explosive remnants is almost impossible under current conditions.
Since October 7, 2023, Israeli occupation forces backed by the United States and Europe have carried out a genocide in the Gaza Strip involving mass killing, starvation, destruction, displacement, and arrests, while ignoring international appeals and orders from the International Court of Justice to stop.
The genocide has left more than 241,000 Palestinians killed or wounded, most of them children and women, in addition to over 11,000 missing persons, hundreds of thousands displaced, and a famine that has claimed countless lives again, mostly children.
