The UN has said Gaza is filled with more debris and rubble than Ukraine, with the mammoth task of clearing it made all the more costly and dangerous by the sheer amount of asbestos and unexploded ordnance, AFP reports.

Six months into the fighting between Israel and Hamas, the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) estimated the amount of debris in the Gaza Strip at 37 million tonnes in mid-April, or 300 kilogrammes per square metre.

“Gaza has more rubble than Ukraine, and to put that in perspective, the Ukrainian front line is 600 miles (nearly 1,000km) long, and Gaza is 25 miles (40km) long,” said Mungo Birch, head of the UNMAS programme in the Palestinian territories.

But the volume of rubble is not the only problem, said UNMAS.

“This rubble is likely heavily contaminated with UXO (unexploded ordnance), but its clearance will be further complicated by other hazards in the rubble,” Birch told journalists in Geneva.

“There’s estimated to be over 800,000 tonnes of asbestos, for instance, alone in the Gaza rubble.”

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