The Shorbasi family was sitting in their badly damaged home in Gaza City, enjoying the relative calm of the fire. They then heard an explosion and ran outside to find their 6-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 was 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 taking 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, search through the rubble for what remains of their belongings and hitherto unreachable bodies.
Shorbasi said the family had returned home after the ceasefire was established. Gaza City had been the focus of the last Israeli military offensive before the deal was reached between Israel and Hamas.
“We just returned last week,” the grandfather said at Shifa hospital, fighting back tears. “Their lives have been ruined forever.”
The boy, Yahya, lay in a hospital bed with his right arm and leg wrapped in bandages. Nabila, who is now being treated at the Patient’s Friends hospital, had her forehead bandaged.
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Both children’s faces were riddled with small shrapnel wounds.
An emergency room doctor and a British pediatrician working at one of the hospitals told The Associated Press that the twins had life-threatening injuries, including the loss of a hand, a hole in the intestine, broken bones and the possible loss of a leg.
The children underwent emergency surgery and their conditions have relatively stabilized, the doctor said. But concerns remain about her recovery due to a severe lack of medicine and medical supplies in Gaza, said Dr. Harriet, who declined to give her last name because her employer had not authorized her to speak to the media.
“It’s just a waiting game now, so I hope they both survive, but right now I can’t tell, and this is a common recurrence,” he said.
Health workers consider unexploded ordnance a major threat to Palestinians. Two other children, Yazan and Jude Nour, were injured Thursday while their family was inspecting their home in Gaza City, according to Shifa Hospital.
Gaza’s Health Ministry, which operates under the Hamas-led government, said five children were injured by unexploded ordnance over the past week, including one in the southern city of Khan Younis.
“This is the death trap,” Dr. Harriet said. “We are talking about a ceasefire, but the killings have not stopped.”
More than 68,500 Palestinians have already died in the conflict, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry maintains detailed records of victims that are generally considered reliable by UN agencies and independent experts. Israel has questioned them without paying its own price.
Luke Irving, head of the UN Mine Action Service, UNMAS, in the Palestinian territories, warned that “the risk of explosion 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 Palestinians killed and another 267 injured by unexploded ordnance in Gaza since the latest conflict began. UNMAS, however, said the number of victims could be much higher.
Irving told a United Nations briefing last week that 560 unexploded ordnance had been found during the current ceasefire and 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 efforts to collect unexploded ordnance in Gaza, he said.
“As expected, we’re now finding more items because we’re going out more; teams have more access,” he said.
Friday’s explosion that injured the twins occurred outside a multi-story residential building that, like many in Gaza, was severely damaged with debris piled outside. At the top of the outside steps there was a small hole in the concrete caused by the explosion.
“We ran out and found the boy lying on one side and the girl on the other,” said his uncle, Ziad Al-Shorbasi.
As he spoke, another little boy stood at the same door.
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