A bomb in the rubble of Gaza injures twins who thought they were toys – National

The Shorbasi family was trapped in their heavily damaged house Gaza City, enjoying the relative peace of the ceasefire. Then they heard an explosion and rushed outside to find their six-year-old twins bleeding on the ground.

The boy, Yahya, and his sister, Nabila, had discovered a round object while playing. One touch and it went off.

“It looked like a toy,” their grandfather, Tawfiq Shorbasi, said of the unexploded ordnance after the children were rushed to Shifa Hospital on Friday. “It was extremely difficult.”

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are seizing the opportunity to return to what remains of their homes under the ceasefire that began on October 10. But the dangers are far from over as people, including children, pick through the rubble in search of what’s left of their belongings, and bodies that were hitherto inaccessible.

Shorbasi said the family returned home after the ceasefire took effect. Gaza City was the focus of the last Israeli military offensive before the Israel-Hamas deal was reached.

“We just came back last week,” the grandfather said at Shifa Hospital, fighting back tears. “Their lives are ruined forever.”

The boy, Yahya, lay on a hospital bed with his right arm and leg wrapped in bandages. Nabila, who is now being treated at Patient’s Friends hospital, had a bandaged forehead.

Both children’s faces were riddled with small shrapnel wounds.

A British emergency physician and pediatrician who worked at one of the hospitals told The Associated Press that the twins had life-threatening injuries, including a lost hand, a hole in the intestine, broken bones and possible loss of a leg.

The children underwent emergency surgery and their condition has been relatively stabilized, the doctor said. But concerns remain about their recovery due to the dire lack of medicine and medical facilities in Gaza, said Dr. Harriet, who declined to give her last name because her employer had not given her permission to speak to the media.

“Now it’s just a wait and see thing, so I hope they both survive, but right now I can’t say, and this is a common recurrence,” she said.

Health workers call unexploded ordnance a major threat to Palestinians. According to Shifa Hospital, two other children, Yazan and Jude Nour, were injured on Thursday while their relatives inspected their home in Gaza City.

Gaza’s health ministry, which operates under the Hamas-led government, said five children were injured by unexploded ordnance in the past week, including one in the southern town of Khan Younis.

“This is the death trap,” said Dr. Harriet. “We are talking about a ceasefire, but the killing has not stopped.”

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More than 68,500 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its count. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are considered generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts. Israel has contested them without paying its own toll.

Luke Irving, head of the UN Mine Action Service, UNMAS, in the Palestinian territories, has warned that “the risk of explosions is incredibly high” as both aid workers and displaced Palestinians return to areas vacated by the Israeli army in Gaza.

As of October 7, UNMAS had documented at least 52 deaths and 267 others injured by unexploded ordnance in Gaza since the start of the latest conflict in Gaza. However, UNMAS said the toll could be much higher.

Irving told a United Nations briefing last week that 560 unexploded ordnances have been found during the current ceasefire, with many more under the rubble. Two years of conflict have left up to 60 million tons of rubble across Gaza, he added.

In the coming weeks, more international demining experts are expected to join forces to collect unexploded ordnance in Gaza, he said.

“As expected, we are now finding more items because we are on the streets more; the teams have more access,” he said.

Friday’s explosion that injured the twins took place outside a multi-story residential building that, like many other buildings in Gaza, stood badly damaged, with rubble piled outside. There was a small hole in the concrete at the top of the outer steps, caused by the explosion.

“We ran outside and found the boy thrown on one side and the girl on the other,” said their uncle, Ziad Al-Shorbasi.

As he spoke, another small child stood in the same doorway.

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