UN official: Clearing 37 million tons of debris in Gaza could take 14 years

The vast amount of rubble including unexploded ordnance left by the war between Israel and the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip could take about 14 years to remove, a United Nations official says during a briefing in Geneva.

Pehr Lodhammar, senior officer at the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS), says that the war has left an estimated 37 million tons of debris in the widely urbanized, densely populated coastal enclave.

He says 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 percent of land service ammunition that is being fired and fails to function,” he says. “We’re talking about 14 years of work with 100 trucks.”

The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.