The Palestinian boy lost his eyes at the unexploded bomb. Gaza may retain thousands of tons of explosives

Mohamed Hijazi squirmed his father to untie the bandage for him. He cried and kicked, but his father managed to finally put the bandage on his eyes.

“It's okay.” Abu Mohamed told his children to calm him down with his last effort. But this boy could not accommodate.

The seven-year-old boy played outside his family home in April, where his cousin lived in Jabalia, north of Gaza, when the children encountered a bomb that did not detonate.

“It exploded in front of him,” Abu Mohammed said. “We found out [him] Full of blood. ”

The child was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment and then transferred through the ophthalmology department to a hospital in central Gaza, which could perform the surgery he needed. His right eye was removed. His father said he could also lose the left.

Children attract shiny objects

Gaza has many dangers to children like Mohamed, from air strikes to disease and malnutrition to shootings that have become routine at the aid distribution site. However, the risks of unexploded bombs, mines, idiot traps and other ammunition scattered around Gaza are particularly insidious.

“They are different; literally, they are shiny,” said Luke Irving, head of the United Nations Mining Action Plan. “A child will be attracted to it immediately.”

As many as 6,800 tons of unexploded military equipment may be found, according to the government media office run by Hamas, Gaza. Spread throughout Gaza. This is based on the United Nations Estimated about 5% to 10% Of all the weapons fired on the territory, none of them were detonated.

Irving said that since Israel began bombing Gaza on October 7, 2023, there have been 222 accidents related to unexploded ordnance, which were about 1,200 people caused by Hamas-led attacks and saw another 250 people taking hostages.

There may be hundreds of such encounters, but such events are not always formally calculated, Irving said. With many medical infrastructure in the ruins, he said, doctors in Gaza are focused on trying to stabilize patients rather than assessing the cause of their injuries or death.

Encounters with unexploded munitions are not always fatal, but can cause catastrophic injury and lifelong disability to be challenging in the war zone and manage them through the damaged health care system.

Only 17 out of 36 in Gaza Hospital According to Doctors Without Borders, as of December 2024, more than 1,000 medical staff were killed as of December 2024.

“Tick Time Bomb”

In Mohammed's case, the doctor told him that his left eye might be saved, but he had to be medically evacuated from Canada for surgery. Before that, his father held his hand and guided him every step, accustomed to releasing simple movements and tasks that had not been thought about before.

“As a father, it’s hard to see Hammerd [potentially] Abu Mohamed said with his son's nickname: “I saw his cousin playing and Hamood wouldn't play with them. It was very difficult for me.”

Before the war ended, operations to remove unexploded ordnance were usually impossible, so in the Gaza Strip, the battle between Hamas and Israel continued to advance and moved to different areas of the enclave, with people repeatedly displaced and returning to bombed areas, and ammunition remained a lasting danger.

And they are not easy to spot. The war not only claimed the lives of about 54,000 Palestinians. It's roughly left 70% The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the structure of the enclave was destroyed or damaged. Mixed with that rubble were hundreds of “ticking time bombs”, Owen said.

“Because it's already fired and its effective release mechanism is ready to explode, it's designed to hit something, or have a timer, and it will detonate,” he said. “They're not designed to sit there, that's the risk.”

United Nations Mining Operations Services estimates last year Gaza can take 14 years to clear UXO.

“No dreams”

His father said that before the war, Mohammed attended kindergarten in his class. He held up a picture of the child eight to nine months before the accident. At that time, due to the battle in the north, the family was displaced in southern Gaza. Mohamed, wearing a black sportswear, stood in front of the tent in his and his family’s shelter. His smile at the camera was huge, his eyes shining.

When the CBC met him, he sat in their home, which was partially destroyed in the war. He was injured in the explosion. His elbows were wrapped in gauze. His remaining eyes were bursting into tears.

His father said Mohammed had always wanted to learn engineering. At first, the accident only further motivated him. He told his father that when he recovered, he would become an engineer so that he could help rebuild Gaza. But the prospect of permanent loss of vision weakens that determination.

“This explosion destroyed Hammerd's dream,” his father said. “Now, because he lost one eye and probably lost the other, there was no dream left.”