They found a 'bucket of lentils.' Then it blew up. The menace of Gaza's unexploded ordnance
toggle caption Anas Baba/NPR
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — "The other boys told me they were buckets of lentils," recalls 8-year-old Joud Ahmad Al Angar. He's talking about the container of small black pellets he and his cousins found in the rubble near their tent in Gaza City.
His 12-year-old cousin Zain Nour thought the pellets looked like chunks of coal. Perhaps they could help start a fire so that their parents could cook dinner. Whatever it was, the boys reasoned, maybe it could help their families in some way.
"When we brought it back to the tent," says Zain, "the adults said, 'Go return that to where you found it,' so my cousin tossed it, and then it exploded."
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Phone video captured immediately after the explosion and shared with NPR by a family member shows Zain and Joud staggering from the scene of the blast, both of them screaming and covered in blood.
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