Gaza rubble removal will take 15 years: UN

 

    A building in Gaza City destroyed by Israeli strikes

Gaza has been reduced to rubble after more than 9 months of war. UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, said it would take 15 years to remove the rubble. On Monday, UNRWA said that about four million tons of rubble must be removed from Gaza.

The agency gave the figures citing an assessment by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

UNRWA said, "These tons of debris have become a mortal threat to the residents of the Gaza Strip. Because, those debris may contain unexploded weapons and harmful substances.

"All the investment in human development in Gaza in the last 40 years or so has gone down the drain...we're back to the 1980s, so to speak."

Abdullah Al-Dardari, Director of UNDP's Regional Bureau for Arab Countries

The agency also said hundreds of trucks and more than 500 million US dollars are needed to remove the debris from Gaza.

According to UNEP, some of the debris contained the highly toxic mineral asbestos; Which causes lung diseases including cancer. Many bodies are buried under the mountain-like rubble of buildings that collapsed in the attack. They rot and spread various pollution.

Earlier, after the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza in 2014, about 2.4 million tons of debris had to be removed.

UNEP has calculated that the amount of debris created by the various wars in Gaza since 2008, this war has created 13 times more debris than those debris.

Israel's military radio quoted military officials as saying last month that Israel has so far dropped about 50,000 bombs on Gaza since the war began on October 7 last year. Among those bombs, two to three thousand bombs are lying unexploded.

According to a statistic provided by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) last May, it will take 2040 years to rebuild the houses destroyed in the war in Gaza. It will cost 4 thousand to 5 thousand US dollars.

Abdullah al-Dardari, director of UNDP's regional bureau for Arab countries, said at the time, "We haven't seen anything like this since 1945."

The extent of the devastation in Gaza sets the Palestinian Valley back nearly 40 years.

Al-Dardari said, "All the investment in human development in Gaza in the last 40 years or so has gone down the drain...we're back to the 1980s, so to speak."