Bomb disposal squad in Gaza faces risks amid little protection

The squad has carried out 1,200 missions to neutralise, defuse and destroy unexploded warheads in residential areas.

Gaza City, Gaza – On May 19, shortly after midnight, a reconnaissance missile tore through the roof of the Muhareb family home in Rafah in the south of the besieged Gaza Strip. Two minutes later, an Israeli warplane dropped another missile, which crashed through two storeys of the house, but somehow did not explode. “My brother and his family, who live on the second floor, were all injured from the reconnaissance missile,” Waseem Muhareb told Al Jazeera. “My four-month-old baby was in a coma for two days, and my eight-year-old niece Layan was in the intensive care unit for 10 days with burns all over her body.”