❗️Gaza’s surface clearance of unexploded ordnance could take up to 30 years, aid official warns

 ❗️Gaza’s surface clearance of unexploded ordnance could take up to 30 years, aid official warns

Clearing Gaza’s surface of unexploded ordnance could take between 20 and 30 years, an official from the aid organization Humanity & Inclusion warned, describing the territory as a “horrific, unmapped minefield.”

According to a UN-led database, over 53 people have been killed and hundreds more injured by explosive remnants in Gaza, a figure aid groups believe is a severe undercount.

“If you’re looking at a full clearance, it’s never happening, it’s subterranean. We will find it for generations to come,” said Nick Orr, an Explosive Ordnance Disposal expert at Humanity & Inclusion, likening the situation to post–World War II British cities.

“Surface clearance, now that’s something that’s attainable within a generation, I think 20 to 30 years,” he said, noting that “it’s going to be a very small chipping away at a very big problem.”

(Reuters)