The vast amount of rubble including unexploded ordnance left by Israel’s devastating war in the Gaza Strip could take about 14 years to remove, a United Nations official said on Friday.
Israel’s military campaign against Gaza’s Hamas has reduced much of the narrow, coastal territory of 2.3 million people to a wasteland.
Pehr Lodhammar, senior officer at the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS), told a briefing in Geneva that the war had left an estimated 37 million tons of debris in the widely urbanized, densely populated territory.
He said that although it is impossible to determine the exact number of unexploded ordnance found in Gaza, it could take 14 years under certain conditions to clear debris, including rubble from destroyed buildings.
“We know that typically there’s a failure rate of at least 10% of land service ammunition that is being fired and fails to function,” he said. “We’re talking about 14 years of work with 100 trucks.”
At least 34,305 Palestinians have been killed and 77,293 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
400,000 Buildings Destroyed
Some officials in the heavily populated enclave fear that even a ceasefire may not be enough to restore life to normal in Gaza where the ruins of more than 400,000 buildings were fully or partly destroyed in the six months of Israel’s devastating war on the Strip.
A high-ranking Palestinian official told the Arab World Press that more than 20 million tons of debris have been left by Israel’s air, ground and sea attacks on the five districts of Gaza.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that more than one quarter of this quantity is metal parts and scraps.
“There is no building spared from the shelling in the Gaza Strip since the war started… Look around and observe what’s happened since October 7. There are at least 20 million tons of debris in the Gaza Strip,” the official said.
Debris 30 times the size of Gaza
The Palestinian official’s estimates coincided with UN reports saying the Gaza Strip needs some $25 billion to rebuild what the war machine has destroyed in about 200 days.
The official explained that given the density, size, area, and height of one meter, the enormous amount of rubble in Gaza is about 30 times the size of the Strip.
“This amount of rubble poses enormous difficulties for reconstruction operations and could take years to remove,” he said.
The Euro-Med Monitor said in a report this week that at least 131,200 housing units in the Gaza Strip have been completely destroyed, and another 281,000 units have been partially destroyed.
