Israel’s war on Gaza has put back development there by 60 years and mobilising the tens of billions of dollars needed for reconstruction will be an uphill task, AFP quotes the United Nations as saying.

Around two-thirds of all buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or damaged, and removing the estimated 42 million tonnes of rubble will be dangerous and complex, Achim Steiner, the head of the UN Development Programme, told AFP during an interview in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos.

“But we’re also talking about an economy that has been destroyed, where we estimate that roughly 60 years of development have been lost in this conflict over 15 months.

“Two million people who are in the Gaza Strip have lost not only their shelter: they’ve lost public infrastructure, sewage treatment systems, freshwater supply systems, public waste management. All of these fundamental infrastructure and service elements simply do not exist.”

And for all these towering numbers, Steiner stressed: “Human desperation is not just something that you capture in statistics.”