JERUSALEM: Hundreds of Israelis gathered on a grassy hill overlooking parliament on Thursday to smoke marijuana in an act of communal defiance of current laws.
Sitting in small groups on mats shaded by trees in the Rose Garden just across from the Knesset, participants lit up as the clock struck 4:20 p.m. for the local version of the traditional worldwide April 20 pro-marijuana events, known as “420” rallies.
In the afternoon, revellers were mostly men in their early 20s but organizers expected thousands more people to join the event, set to continue till the early hours of Friday.
Guitar music hung in the air with the smoke wafting skyward and the sound of conversation.
Police did not intervene.
To Itamar Yitzhakov, nearly 22 years old from Holon near Tel Aviv, the smoking event — known locally as the Big Bong Night — was already “a tradition.”
“Once a year we celebrate cannabis day. We forget all our troubles, gather here — all the brothers who smoke — and we bond,” he said.
Yitzhakov said he has been smoking for a few years but he only came out of the “cannabis closet” to his parents and employers a few months ago.
“I don’t smoke huge quantities,” he said. “After a hard day’s work, I want to roll myself a nice joint.”
Last month, the government approved a plan partially decriminalyzing marijuana use in public in favor of fines and treatment, but cannabis advocates are calling for full legalization.
' I like to smoke'
The Big Bong Nights were founded by Amos Dov Silver, a legalization activist who organized the first such event in 2014 and a second one in 2016.
Silver was imprisoned for his role in the 2014 event, following which he left Israel for California where he has been living for the past 18 months.
Speaking with AFP from his American exile, Silver said the event was not a demonstration or a protest as much as it was a way to challenge the authorities’ mindset on marijuana by bringing together thousands of smokers at once, whose numbers would be too great for the police to hand everyone a ticket.
“The more people present, the more the awareness will rise and we’ll be able to start advancing legalization,” Yitzhakov said as he held a smoking mango-scented joint.
Legalization might take time, but decriminalization was welcomed by Tal Ofer — “43 years old, a father to a 16-month-old child, totally normative, employed as a programmer — and I like to smoke,” he said.
Ofer, from Gan Yavne, near the southern coastal city of Ashdod, who brought his non-smoking wife and baby to the event, described it as “a physical act of totally peaceful protest” pertaining to his personal liberties.
“I want to smoke. I know it’s good for me. I know how good the material is,” he said.
As a “very hyperactive person,” for Ofer smoking marijuana was mainly a way to calm himself down and enable him to focus.
“This is my healthy Ritalin,” he said, referring to a drug for treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
While Ofer acknowledged the legal and procedural complexities of full-fledged legalization, Yitzhakov was undeterred in his hopes it would happen soon.
“I believe there will be legalization this year. It’s always good to hope — what harm can it do?“
The code 420 is most often used in North America, attributed to a group of young pot-lovers in the 1970s who met up at 4:20 pm.
Israel marijuana addicts hold mass pot protest by parliament
Israel marijuana addicts hold mass pot protest by parliament
Amputee Palestinian boy image wins World Press Photo award
- The photographer is from Gaza and was herself evacuated in December 2023
- The jury praised the photo’s “strong composition and attention to light” and its thought-provoking subject-matter
The picture, by Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times, depicts Mahmoud Ajjour, evacuated to Doha after an explosion severed one arm and mutilated the other last year.
“One of the most difficult things Mahmoud’s mother explained to me was how when Mahmoud first came to the realization that his arms were amputated, the first sentence he said to her was, ‘How will I be able to hug you’?” said Elouf.
The photographer is also from Gaza and was herself evacuated in December 2023. She now portrays badly wounded Palestinians based in Doha.
“This is a quiet photo that speaks loudly. It tells the story of one boy, but also of a wider war that will have an impact for generations,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, World Press Photo Executive Director.
The jury praised the photo’s “strong composition and attention to light” and its thought-provoking subject-matter, especially questions raised over Mahmoud’s future.
The boy is now learning to play games on his phone, write, and open doors with his feet, the jury said.
“Mahmoud’s dream is simple: he wants to get prosthetics and live his life as any other child,” said the World Press Photo organizers in a statement.
The jury also selected two photos for the runner-up prize.
The first, entitled “Droughts in the Amazon” by Musuk Nolte for Panos Pictures and the Bertha Foundation, shows a man on a dried-up river bed in the Amazon carrying supplies to a village once accessible by boat.
The second, “Night Crossing” by John Moore shooting for Getty Images, depicts Chinese migrants huddling near a fire during a cold rainshower after crossing the US-Mexico border.
The jury sifted through 59,320 photographs from 3,778 photo journalists to select 42 prize-winning shots from around the world.
Photographers for Agence France-Presse were selected four times for a regional prize, more than any other organization.
Nairobi-based Luis Tato won in the “Stories” category for the Africa region for a selection of photos depicting Kenya’s youth uprising.
Jerome Brouillet won in the “Singles” category Asia-Pacific and Oceania for his iconic picture of surfer Gabriel Medina seemingly floating above the waves.
Clarens Siffroy won in the “Stories” category North and Central America for his coverage of the gang crisis in Haiti.
Finally, Anselmo Cunha won in the “Singles” category for South America for his photo of a Boeing 727-200 stranded at Salgado Filho International Airport in Brazil.
Lebanon’s former interior minister appears before Beirut port blast investigator
- Judge Bitar resumed his investigation earlier this year following prolonged legal and political obstacles
DUBAI: Former Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk appeared before Judge Tarek Bitar on Thursday as part of the ongoing investigation into the 2020 Beirut port explosion.
Machnouk arrived at the judge’s office accompanied by his attorney, Naoum Farah, the National News Agency reported.
The interrogation session began shortly after their arrival, marking a significant step in the judicial probe into one of Lebanon’s most devastating tragedies, which killed over 200 people and injured thousands.
Judge Bitar resumed his investigation earlier this year following prolonged legal and political obstacles.
Gaza rescuers say 25 killed in Israeli strikes on displaced people
- Overnight strike targeted several tents in the Al-Mawasi area of the southern city of Khan Yunis, resulting in 16 deaths
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency reported on Thursday that a wave of Israeli air strikes hit multiple encampments for displaced Palestinians across the territory, killing at least 25 people.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said an overnight strike targeted several tents in the Al-Mawasi area of the southern city of Khan Yunis, resulting in 16 deaths.
“At least 16 martyrs, most of them women and children, and 23 others were wounded following a direct strike by two Israeli missiles on several tents housing displaced families in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Yunis,” Bassal said.
According to Bassal, two additional strikes on other encampments of displaced people killed eight and wounded several more.
Seven were killed in a strike on tents in the northern town of Beit Lahia, while another attack near the Al-Mawasi area killed a father and his child who were living in a tent, Bassal said.
Operation Assad: the air mission to smuggle the Syrian despot’s valuables
- Ousted Syrian ruler used private jet to move cash, valuables, and documents to Abu Dhabi, sources say
- Plane made four flights in last days of Assad’s regime, the last one from Russian base
DUBAI: As his enemies closed in on Damascus, Bashar Assad, who ruled over Syria with an iron fist for 24 years, used a private jet to spirit away cash, valuables and confidential documents mapping the corporate web behind his wealth.
Yasar Ibrahim, the president’s top economic adviser, arranged the leasing of the plane to transport Assad’s treasured assets, relatives, aides and presidential palace personnel to the United Arab Emirates aboard four flights, according to an account of the operation pieced together by Reuters from more than a dozen sources.
Ibrahim, who ran the economic and financial office of the presidency, was instrumental in creating a network of entities Assad used to control swathes of Syria’s economy, often acting as a front for the former ruler, according to US sanctions notices, as well as experts on Syria’s economy and one source inside Assad’s business network. Western nations imposed sanctions on Assad following his repression of 2011 pro-democracy protests and later on Ibrahim for assisting the regime.
The Embraer Legacy 600 jet made the four back-to-back trips to Syria in the 48 hours before the regime’s fall, according to a Reuters review of flight tracking records. The plane, which has the tail number C5-SKY, is registered in Gambia. The fourth flight departed on December 8 from the Russian-operated Hmeimim military air base, near Latakia, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, according to flight tracking records, a satellite image and a former Air Force Intelligence source with direct knowledge of the operation. Assad fled to Russia on the same day from the same base.
The operation to extract Assad’s assets from Syria has not been previously reported. Reuters spoke to 14 Syrian sources with knowledge of the scheme, including airport staff, former intelligence and Presidential Guard officers and a person within Assad’s business network.
The news agency also reviewed a WhatsApp conversation between Ibrahim’s associates, flight tracking data, satellite images, and corporate and aviation ownership registers on three continents to assemble its account of how Assad’s closest confidant orchestrated safe passage for the plane.
The jet carried unmarked black bags of cash holding at least $500,000 as well as documents, laptops and hard drives with key intelligence about “The Group,” the codename Assad and Ibrahim’s associates used for the intricate network of entities spanning telecoms, banking, real estate, energy and other activities, according to the individual inside Assad’s network, a former Air Force Intelligence officer and the WhatsApp conversation. Assad, whose whereabouts was kept secret from even close family members in the last frantic days of his regime, has been granted political asylum in Russia. Reuters was unable to reach him or Ibrahim for comment. The foreign ministries of Russia and the UAE didn’t respond to questions about the operation.
The government of new president Ahmed Al-Sharaa is determined to recover public funds taken abroad in the run up to Assad’s fall, a senior official told Reuters, to support Syria’s economy as it labors under sanctions and a currency shortage.
The official confirmed to Reuters that money was smuggled out of the country before the former ruler’s ouster, but did not elaborate how, adding that authorities were still determining where the money went.
Reuters could not independently determine whether Assad actively directed the escape operation. Several sources with direct knowledge of the mission said it could not have happened without the ruler’s blessing.
’YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS PLANE’
On December 6, as rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham marched toward the capital, the 13-seater Embraer jet approached Damascus International Airport.
More than a dozen staff in the camouflage uniforms of Syria’s Air Force Intelligence — a main instrument of political repression under Assad — mobilized to guard the Hall of Ceremonies, the airport’s VIP section, and its access route, according to six sources with knowledge of the operation. Four of these sources said they were at the scene.
A handful of civilian cars with tinted windows approached the area, three of the people on site said. The cars belonged to the elite Republican Guard, tasked to protect Assad and the Presidential Palace, said two of the people on site — the former intelligence officer and a senior airport official.
The involvement of the Republican Guard meant that “Bashar (Assad) gave the orders” relating to the operation, according to a former senior Republican Guard member. The guard answered only to its commander, Assad’s cousin General Talal Makhlouf, or Assad himself, this person added.
The head of airport security, Brig.-General Ghadeer Ali, told airport staff that Air Force Intelligence personnel would handle the aircraft, according to Mohammed Qairout, head of ground operations with Syrian Air.
“This plane is coming to land and we will deal with it,” Qairout recalled being told by Ali. “You have not seen this plane.”
Ali, a senior Air Force Intelligence officer, took orders directly from the Presidential Palace, three Syrian airport officials and the former intelligence officer said.
Reuters could not reach Ali for comment.
FINAL HOURS The C5-SKY plane flew each time to Abu Dhabi’s Al Bateen Executive Airport, used by dignitaries and known for its strict privacy, Flightradar24 data show. At first, the jet left Dubai on Dec. 6 and landed in Damascus around noon local time (0900 GMT). It then flew to Al Bateen airport and was back in Damascus just after 10 p.m.
Each time it landed, “cars rushed toward the plane, staying for a short time and then leaving just before the plane took off again,” said one of five sources working at the airport.
Ali told Air Force Intelligence staff that Presidential Palace personnel and relatives of Assad — including teenagers — were due to board the first two flights that left Damascus on December 6, which also carried cash, according to the former intelligence officer at the scene.
Reuters could not access a manifest for the four flights to confirm the plane’s passengers or cargo.
The second flight from Damascus also transported paintings and some small sculptures, said the same source.
On Dec. 7, the jet was back in Damascus around 4 p.m. and left for Al Bateen for a third time over an hour later, this time loaded with bags of cash as well as hard drives and electronic devices containing information about Assad’s corporate network, according to the intelligence officer and the source inside Assad’s business network.
The stored information included financial records, minutes of meetings, ownership of companies, real estate and partnerships, as well as details of cash transfers and offshore companies and accounts, this source said.
This time, vehicles belonging to the UAE embassy in Damascus approached the VIP airport area before the jet took off, said the former intelligence officer, which he said suggested the UAE was aware of the operation.
DETOUR TO RUSSIAN BASE
Early on December 8, rebel fighters reached Damascus, prompting Assad to flee for his coastal stronghold of Latakia, in coordination with Russian forces. Damascus airport stopped operating.
Shortly after midnight that day, the C5-SKY jet left Al Bateen one last time. After passing over the city of Homs, north of Damascus, at around 3 a.m. local time, the plane dropped off flight tracking coverage for about six hours before reappearing over Homs, headed back to Abu Dhabi, data from Flightradar24 show.
During that window, it landed at the Hmeimim base in the Latakia province, according to the former intelligence officer.
A satellite image taken at 9:11 a.m. by Planet Labs captured the plane on the runway at Hmeimim. Reuters was able to confirm the Embraer jet in the image was C5-SKY based on the size and shape and flight tracking data. The jet was the only private plane flying in and out of Syria between December 6 and December 8, flight tracking data show.
Aboard the flight from Hmeimim was Ahmed Khalil Khalil, a close associate of Ibrahim active inside Assad’s network, according to the Air Force Intelligence officer, the source inside Assad’s business empire and the WhatsApp conversation. Khalil is under Western sanctions for supporting the former regime by operating and controlling several businesses in Syria.
He had reached the Russian base in an Emirati embassy armored car and was carrying $500,000 in cash, according to the person inside Assad’s network and the WhatsApp messages.
Khalil had withdrawn the money two days earlier from an account with the Syria International Islamic Bank (SIIB), according to the same sources.
The person inside Assad’s circle said the account belongs to Damascus-based Al-Burj Investments. The company is 50 percent owned by Ibrahim, according to The Syria Report, an online platform that contains a corporate database compiled by Syria experts which cited 2018 official Syrian records.
Khalil did not respond to a request for comment sent via his Facebook account. SIIB and Al-Burj did not respond to emails seeking comment.
The individual inside Assad’s business circle and a former official at Syria’s Air Transport Authority said the Embraer jet was operating under a ‘dry lease’, in which the owner provides the aircraft, but no crew, pilot, maintenance, ground operations or insurance.
Reuters couldn’t determine who operated the flights.
Ibrahim reached Abu Dhabi on Dec. 11, this person added.
Asked about the plane in an interview with Reuters, Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa declined to comment.
’THE LEBANESE PLANE’
Ibrahim leased the jet from Lebanese businessman Mohamad Wehbe, according to a member of Syria’s business elite and the source inside Assad’s network. In the WhatsApp conversation the jet was described by one of Ibrahim’s associates as “the Lebanese plane.”
In April 2024, Mohamad Wehbe posted pictures of C5-SKY on LinkedIn with the caption, “welcome.” In January, the businessman wrote in a separate LinkedIn post that the aircraft was for sale. The plane was registered in Gambia to a local company, Flying Airline Company, from April 2024. Flight tracking records show that, in the months preceding Assad’s fall, the aircraft had flown to Assad’s ally Russia, currently under Western aviation sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine. Reuters was unable to reach the registered contact for Flying Airline Company in Gambia, Sheikh Tijan Jallow.
Flying Airline Co. is 30 percent-owned by another Lebanese national, Oussama Wehbe, and 70 percent-owned by Iraqi national Safa Ahmed Saleh, as per Gambian records.
Social media show Mohamad Wehbe has a son named Oussama who also works in the aviation industry. Reuters could not confirm if he is the same man on the Gambian registry.
Contacted by Reuters, Mohamad Wehbe denied any involvement with the C5-SKY flights in and out of Syria and told Reuters he does not own the plane but merely rents it “sometimes” from a broker, whose name he declined to provide. He did not respond to questions about whether his son was involved.
Oussama Wehbe did not reply to a request for comment. Reuters could not locate Safa Ahmed Saleh.
The unexploded bombs of Gaza
- Since the start of the war on October 7, 2023, at least 23 people have been killed and 162 injured by discarded or unexploded ordnance
- International efforts to help clear the bombs during any lulls in the fighting have been hampered by Israel
KHAN YOUNIS: The Gaza Strip is strewn with undetonated explosives from tens of thousands of Israeli air strikes, leaving the territory “uninhabitable,” according to the US government.
In February, US President Donald Trump suggested the United States take over Gaza and take responsibility for clearing unexploded bombs and other weapons, to create the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
The challenge to clear the lethal remnants, examined here in detail for the first time, is huge.
Israel’s bombardments resumed in March after a January ceasefire fell apart — an offensive that the United Nations said has captured or depopulated two-thirds of the enclave. More bombs fall daily.
By October 2024, Israel’s military said, it had carried out over 40,000 air strikes on the Strip. The UN Mine Action Service estimates that between one in 10 and one in 20 bombs fired into Gaza did not go off.
Those weapons are among more than 50 million tons of rubble which according to the UN Environment Programme are scattered across Gaza, a densely populated area far smaller than the State of Rhode Island.
"Inhumane"
Gaza’s own cleanup efforts started quickly. Near the city of Khan Younis a week after the January ceasefire, bulldozer driver Alaa Abu Jmeiza was clearing a street close to where 15-year old Saeed Abdel Ghafour was playing. The bulldozer blade struck a concealed bomb.
“We were engulfed in the heat of the flames, the fire,” the boy told Reuters. He said he had lost sight in one eye. Driver Jmeiza also lost sight in one eye and has burn and shrapnel injuries on his hands and legs.
Since the start of the war on October 7, 2023, at least 23 people have been killed and 162 injured by discarded or unexploded ordnance, according to a database compiled by a forum of UN agencies and NGOs working in Gaza — an estimate that aid workers say must be a fraction of the total, since few victims know how to report what has happened to them.
Hamas has said it harvested some unexploded ordnance for use against Israel, but also is ready to cooperate with international bodies to remove it.
However, international efforts to help clear the bombs during any lulls in the fighting have been hampered by Israel, which restricts imports into the enclave of goods that can have a military use, nine aid officials told Reuters.
Between March and July last year, Israeli authorities rejected requests to import more than 20 types of demining equipment, representing a total of over 2,000 items — from binoculars to armored vehicles to firing cables for detonations — according to a document compiled by two humanitarian demining organizations seen by Reuters.
“Due to the restrictions by the Israeli authorities on mine action organizations to allow the entry of necessary equipment, the clearance process has not started,” UN human rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence told Reuters.
This poses “serious unnecessary challenges” to humanitarians involved, he added.
Under the 1907 Hague Convention, Israel has an obligation as an occupying power to remove or help remove war remnants that endanger the lives of civilians, said the UN human rights office and the International Committee of the Red Cross. This is an obligation that Israel accepts as binding under customary international law even though it is not a signatory, said Cordula Droege, the ICRC’s chief legal officer.
Israel’s military declined to answer questions about what munitions it has used in Gaza for security reasons, and did not respond to a request for comment on the extent of leftover ordnance. COGAT, the Israeli military agency that oversees shipments into Gaza, did not respond to requests for comment on its role in cleanup efforts. Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel said most of the explosives have been scattered by Hamas, without providing evidence.
A Hamas official declined to answer a question about how many weapons it has used in Gaza or how much remains as unexploded ordnance.
“We have repeatedly stressed that Gaza is uninhabitable and to force Gazans to live among unexploded ordnance is inhumane,” said Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the US National Security Council.
“President Trump has offered a humanitarian vision to rebuild Gaza and we continue to have discussions with regional partners on next steps,” he added, without answering questions on weapons supplied by the US, or its plans for the clean-up.
10 years, $500 Million
Seven weapons experts participating in UN-coordinated discussions on clearance efforts told Reuters it is too early to estimate how many unexploded munitions are in Gaza as there has been no survey. Most asked to remain anonymous, saying that to speak publicly about the weapons contamination or clearance challenges may interfere with their chances of working in Gaza.
The UN Mine Action Service, which removes explosive remnants, educates locals and helps victims, said its disposal teams have spotted hundreds of pieces of war ordnance on the surface, including aircraft bombs, mortars, rockets and Improvised Explosive Devices.
It expects many more may be concealed either in the rubble or lodged underground as “deep-buried bombs.”
Reuters found a bomb more than a meter long on a trash heap in Gaza City, spoke to a man in Nuseirat who said he had to live in a refugee camp because the authorities could not remove a bomb he found in his home, and to others who were still living in a building in Khan Younis beneath which an unexploded bomb was said by police and local authorities to be buried in the sand.
A UN report said two bombs were found at Gaza’s Nuseirat power plant. Gary Toombs, an explosive ordnance disposal expert with Humanity & Inclusion, an aid group, said he had seen bomb remnants being used to prop up homeless shelters. Reuters could not verify these reports.
The Egyptian foreign ministry, which has also presented a reconstruction plan for Gaza, said in March that removing unexploded ordnance would be a priority during the first six months of that project. Removing debris would continue for another two years. A foreign ministry official did not respond to a request for additional details.
Even if Israel cooperated unreservedly, a forum of UN agencies and non-governmental organizations called “the protection cluster” estimated in a document published in December that it could take 10 years and $500 million to clear the bombs.
4,000 duds
Explosive or not, the ruins contain elements like asbestos and contaminants, the UN Environment Programme says — plus thousands of bodies of Palestinians, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
“The damage in Gaza is similar to an enormous earthquake and in the middle of it there’s a few thousand bombs to make it more difficult,” said Greg Crowther, Director of Programmes at the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a global humanitarian and advocacy organization that finds, removes and destroys unexploded bombs after conflict.
“You’ve got the incredibly long process of rebuilding and then these items mean it will take even longer.”
Taking Israel’s reported 40,000 air strikes as a basis, a 10 percent failure rate implies that even if each strike contained just one bomb there would be around 4,000 duds — not including naval or ground strikes or remnants left by Hamas and its allies.
Some experts like MAG’s Crowther think the bombs’ failure rate may be higher than one in 10 in urban centers, since bombs do not always detonate when piercing through multi-story buildings — especially ones that are already damaged.
“This is the most technically challenging and worst humanitarian situation I’ve ever seen,” said Toombs. He has demined in places including Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and Lebanon over a 30-year career.
“It’s going to be incredibly difficult.”
Data on the Israeli strikes from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) shows there have been strikes on Gaza almost every day. In total, the ACLED database shows over 8,000 air strike events — a term that can include multiple individual strikes.
ACLED said that by the end of 2024, Israel had carried out more than nine times as many air strikes as a US-led coalition had in the Battle of Mosul in Iraq in 2016-2017.
Mark 80 Bombs
Palestinian police say they lack equipment to safely clear the debris.
Salama Marouf, the head of the Hamas-run government media office, said 31 members of the police engineering division who deal with weapons clearance had been killed and 22 injured since the war, including while defusing bombs.
Basem Shurrab, the mayor of Al-Qarara town where the January 27 bulldozer explosion occurred, called for international teams to come and help the cleanup.
But those groups say they would need Israel to give the go-ahead for expert visas, armored vehicles, explosives and tunnelling equipment to extract buried bombs.
For now, deminers say they can only mark ordnance and seek to avoid accidents, especially involving children.
Murals and posters commissioned by charities including the Red Cross and Red Crescent show colorful balloons to attract children’s attention next to drawings of bombs and a skull and cross bones.
One shows a boy with an alarmed expression with a thought bubble reading: “DANGER: war ordnance.”
The heaviest class of bombs used in Gaza are the Mark 80s, of which the Mark 84 — a US-made, 2,000 pound aircraft bomb nicknamed the “hammer” by US pilots during the first Gulf War — is the biggest.
The Biden administration sent thousands of Mark 84s to Israel before pausing deliveries last year over concerns about the risk to civilians — a pause since reversed by Trump.
Reuters reporters found two Mark 80s lying in the ruins of Khan Younis, surrounded by red and white warning tape. Three weapons experts identified them from Reuters images. They said they appeared to be Mark 84s, but they could not be sure without measuring them.
If a Mark 84 bomb were to detonate it would leave a crater 14 meters wide, destroy everything within a 7 m radius and kill most people within a 31 m radius, according to PAX, an NGO working for peace based in the Netherlands.
The blast can shower lethal shrapnel fragments nearly 400 m, according to the US airforce. In a landscape as densely populated as Gaza, that could be catastrophic.
Living with a bomb
Hani Al Abadlah, a 49-year-old school teacher, returned to his home in Khan Younis after the January ceasefire to discover that an unidentified bomb had pierced through all three floors without detonating.
It is now believed to be nestled a few meters in the sand beneath his hallway, according to municipal officials and the police explosives engineering unit.
Three weapons disposal experts said a very heavy bomb such as a Mark 84 could have plunged into the deep sand, but added that it could have been removed before Al Abadlah returned — possibly to be reharvested by armed groups.
Al Abadlah said the rest of his family including his wife and children refused to move back because they were too afraid. But he prefers to live in his own damaged home with his brother and the suspected bomb rather than return to a cold tent.
He sleeps on the middle floor and his brother on the floor above.
“No one ... enters out of fear,” he said. “We now are trying to stay in the upper floors, far from where this war remnant is.”
