There are some 37 million tonnes of debris to clear away in Gaza once the Israeli offensive is over, a senior official with the UN Mine Action Service said on Friday.
And unexploded ordnance buried in the rubble would complicate that work, said UNMAS’ Pehr Lodhammar, who has run mine programmes in countries such as Iraq.
It was impossible to say how much of the ammunition fired in Gaza remained live, said Lodhammar.
“We know that typically there is a failure rate of at least 10 per cent of land service ammunition,” he told journalists in Geneva.
This hazardous debris could take more than a decade to clear, according to a senior UN demining official. So far, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, 2023, as bombardment continues.
Pehr Lodhammar, a former chief of the United Nations Mine Action Service in Iraq, highlighted the severity of the situation, noting that there is an average of 300 kilograms of rubble per square meter of land in Gaza.
He explained that with the current volume of debris, it would require around 14 years of continuous work with 100 trucks just to remove it. However, ongoing genocide makes it uncertain how long this clearance effort could ultimately take.
The intensity of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza has led to widespread destruction, particularly of residential buildings. Sixty-five percent of the destroyed structures were homes, adding significant challenges to the rebuilding process due to the risk posed by unexploded munitions buried within the debris.