Bomb in Gaza's rubble wounds twins who thought it was toy
Gaza City (AP): The Shorbasi family was sitting in their severely damaged house in Gaza City, enjoying the relative calm of the ceasefire. Then they heard an explosion and rushed outside to find their 6-year-old twins bleeding on the ground.
The boy, Yahya, and his sister, Nabila, had discovered a round object while playing. One touch, and it went off.
“It was like a toy,” their grandfather, Tawfiq Shorbasi, said of the unexploded ordnance, after the children were rushed to Shifa hospital on Friday. “It was extremely difficult.”
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are seizing the chance to return to what's left of their homes under the ceasefire that began on October 10. But the dangers are far from over as people, including children, sift through the rubble for what remains of their belongings, and for bodies unreachable until now.
Shorbasi said the family had returned home after the ceasefire took hold. Gaza City had been the focus of the final Israeli military offensive before the deal was reached between Israel and Hamas.
“We've just returned last week,” the grandfather said at Shifa hospital, fighting back tears. “Their lives have been ruined forever.”
The boy, Yahya, lay on a hospital bed with his right arm and leg wrapped in bandages. Nabila, now being treated at Patient's Friends hospital, had a bandaged forehead.
Both children's faces were freckled with tiny shrapnel wounds.
A British emergency physician and pediatrician working at one of the hospitals told The Associated Press the twins had life-threatening injuries including a lost hand, a hole in the bowel, broken bones and potential loss of a leg.
The children underwent emergency surgery and their conditions have relatively stabilised, the doctor said. But concerns remain about their recovery because of Gaza's vast lack of medicine and medical supplies, said Dr Harriet, who declined to give her last name because her employer hadn't authorised her to speak to the media.
“Now it's just a waiting game so I hope that they both survive, but at this point in time I can't say, and this is a common recurrence,” she said.
Health workers call unexploded ordnance a major threat to Palestinians. Two other children, Yazan and Jude Nour, were wounded on Thursday while their family was inspecting their home in Gaza City, according to Shifa hospital.
Gaza's Health Ministry, which operates under the Hamas-run government, said five children were wounded by unexploded ordnance over the past week, including one in the southern city of Khan Younis.
“This is the death trap,” Dr Harriet said. “We're talking about a ceasefire, but the killing hasn't stopped.”
Already over 68,500 Palestinians have died in the war, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts. Israel has disputed them without providing its own toll.
Luke Irving, head of the UN Mine Action Service, UNMAS, in the Palestinian territories, has warned that “explosive risk is incredibly high” as both aid workers and displaced Palestinians return to areas vacated by the Israeli military in Gaza.
As of October 7, UNMAS had documented at least 52 Palestinians killed and 267 others wounded by unexploded ordnance in Gaza since the war began. UNMAS, however, said the toll could be much higher.
Irving told a United Nations briefing last week 560 unexploded ordnance items have been found during the current ceasefire with many more under the rubble. Two years of war have left up to 60 million tons of debris across Gaza, he added.
In the coming weeks, additional international de-mining experts are expected to join efforts to collect unexploded ordnance in Gaza, he said.
“As expected, we're now finding more items because we're getting out more; the teams have more access,” he said.
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NEET student hangs self in Rajasthan's Sikar
Jaipur (PTI): A student preparing for the NEET examination allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself in a rented room in Rajasthan's Sikar on Friday, police said.
According to the police, the student allegedly hanged himself from a ceiling fan using his sister's scarf while one sister was attending coaching classes and the other was in the bathroom.
He had appeared in the NEET UG exam 2026, which was cancelled due to paper leak, they said.
Udyog Nagar SHO Rajesh Kumar said that the deceased, identified as Pradeep Meghwal, was a resident of Kanika ki Dhani village in Jhunjhunu's Gudha Gaudji area.
He had been living in a rented room in Sikar's Jaldhari Nagar area with his two sisters while preparing for NEET over the last three years.
His elder sister later found him hanging and informed the landlord and police after bringing him down, officials said.
The SHO said the body was kept at SK Hospital mortuary, and a postmortem had not been conducted.
The student's father, Rajesh Kumar Meghwal, told police that Pradeep's NEET examination had gone well and the family was expecting him to score around 650 marks.
Former Rajasthan deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot expressed grief over the incident and linked it to anxiety among students after reports of irregularities and paper leaks in NEET 2026.
Pilot said repeated paper leak incidents and cancellation of examinations were affecting students' mental health and demanded a time-bound investigation and strict action against those responsible.
