Name: Demining Gaza will prove a decades-long challenge
Uploaded: 2025-10-24T08:43:09.272Z
Duration: 2 min 35 s
Description: Displaced Gazans are on the road again, returning to what’s left of their homes to rebuild their lives. But it’s risky. Unexploded bombs lurk under the rubble and remains of buildings.

Displaced Gazans are on the road again, returning to what’s left of their homes to rebuild their lives. But it’s risky. Unexploded bombs lurk under the rubble and remains of buildings.

Tel Aviv-Yafo

Despite the anticipated end of the conflict in Gaza, the region remains hazardous due to the presence of unexploded munitions buried beneath destroyed buildings and rubble. Experts estimate that around 10% of the bombs dropped on Gaza have failed to detonate, posing a significant risk to returning residents and hampering reconstruction efforts.

International organizations, including the HALO Trust and the United Nations Mine Action Service, are mobilizing resources and personnel to address the issue. However, the scale of the problem means that unexploded ordnance will likely continue to be discovered for decades, requiring sustained international support and coordination to ensure the safety of the population.

Demining Gaza will prove a decades-long challenge

The end of the war may be in sight, but Gaza is still anything but safe. Hidden perils lurk beneath the crumpled structures of Gaza City, unexploded munitions. They've already caused a number of casualties. But after two years of war, Gazans want to go home, rebuild and bury their dead. My brother, he's still under the rubble since November 2023, with his wife and his daughter that will live with their paid dad. Also, I lost my father. Journalist Ghada Kort is worried for her fellow Gazans. People are not aware about the unexploded device in some neighbourhoods or some regions. It's very dangerous. It needs an international organisation to look for these ordnance and to explode it because we don't have like the tools, we don't have anything, the equipment to do that in Gaza. Of the tens of thousands of Israeli bombs dropped on the Palestinian territory, experts say a whopping 10% failed to detonate. We should work on the assumption that there's the potential for every building, every pile of rubble and pretty much any patch of land in Gaza to contain unexploded ordnance. Demining NGO HALO is one group that will be clearing unexploded ordnance in Gaza. They'll send in 200 specialists over the next five years and put the cost at $400 million. It's an expensive business. So while HALO drums up support, especially among rich Arab states, the United Nations Mine Action Service here in East Jerusalem is scaling up the huge effort. It's such an intense, violent conflict in a tight area, in an area where a population hasn't been able to move outside it. Luke Irving and his teams have been in Gaza throughout the war. So while the conflict has progressed, we've tried to do as much as we can to enable humanitarian delivery of aid by mitigating the risk of explosive ordnance. Only under the ceasefire will more personnel and equipment get in once Israel allows it. But the UN and its partners won't uncover every bomb. These items will continue to be found for decades, perhaps even centuries to come. But then all that's needed in Gaza is a capacity to deal with these as they're found. That will take a resourced, coordinated approach and more pressure on Israel.

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