Moein al-Hattu’s home in Gaza City stands in ruins, its walls torn apart by an Israeli air strike.
Suspended from a shattered pillar, a grey, one-ton bomb — dropped by Israeli warplanes — lies unexploded, its tip pressed against the remnants of a crushed chest of drawers.
“I’m living in terror and unable to remove it,” al-Hattu said, as children wandered through the rubble, staring at the deadly relic.
The Palestinian father wants to hang tarpaulins across the wreck of his home and return, but no one in the besieged enclave has the means to disarm or remove the bomb.
“The authorities — civil defense or municipality — say they can’t remove it. Who can I complain to?” he asked.
“If it had exploded, it would have wiped out at least five or six houses.”
After two years of relentless Israeli bombardment, Gaza’s shattered cities — packed with more than two million Palestinians — are littered with the regime’s unexploded ordnance.
Children in Gaza City play among rocket debris and shell casings, unaware that a single touch could end their lives.
A report by Handicap International estimates that Israel has rained down around 70,000 tons of explosives on Gaza since October 7, 2023.
The UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) warned that between five and ten percent of these weapons failed to detonate, turning the enclave into a minefield for its terrified residents.
At Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, Mohammed Nour sits beside his wounded sons, both wrapped in bandages, their legs shattered by fragments from an unexploded Israeli bomb.
“We were setting up our tents and the boys went to find wood and cardboard for cooking,” Nour said.
“Suddenly, there was an explosion. We didn’t realise at first they were our children — we found them scattered everywhere.”
Nearby, six-year-old Yahya lies almost entirely bandaged, part of his right hand torn away.
His grandfather, Tawfiq al-Sharbasi, sits beside him, stroking his hair.
“These are children. What did they do wrong? They were playing,” he said.
Jonathan Crickx, spokesman for UNICEF Palestine, said it remains difficult to count how many children have been maimed by the regime’s unexploded munitions.
“Following the recent ceasefire, we’ve recorded reports of at least eight children seriously injured by explosive remnants of war,” he said, noting that UN agencies are struggling to raise awareness of the threat.
To this day, the Israeli army has blocked all demining equipment from entering Gaza — ensuring that the bombs it dropped continue to terrorize survivors long after the air raids stop.