This round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict that began in October 2023 has left approximately 37 million tons of debris in the Gaza Strip, a senior official with the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) said Friday.
Pehr Lodhammar, senior officer with the UNMAS, told a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland that there were also large amounts of unexploded ordnance buried in the rubble, posing risks to the clean-up work.
"What we do know is that we estimated 37 million tons of debris, which is approximately three hundred kilos of debris per square meter, 65 percent of the buildings that have been destroyed are residential buildings. An estimation has been done based on the current number of tons of debris in Gaza, and with 100 trucks, we're talking about 14 years of work with 100 trucks," he said.
The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip from the ongoing Israeli attacks had risen to 34,454, according to a press statement released by the Hamas-run Health Ministry on Sunday.
It said that the Israeli army had carried out seven military operations in the past 24 hours which killed 66 Palestinians and wounded 138 others, bringing the total injuries to 77,575 in addition to the death toll since the Israel-Hamas conflict broke out on Oct 7, 2023.
Gaza sees 37 mln tons of warfare debris: UN
The third Global Trade and Investment Promotion Summit was held in Beijing on Monday, with representatives calling on the international business community to make concerted efforts to fast-track global economic recovery.
Highlighting mutual trust and cooperation, the focus of the event is "smoothing the supply chain for win-win," with more than 300 attendees from across the world, including heads of chambers of commerce, business associations and trade promotion facilities, as well as high-level representatives from Tesla, Walmart and other Fortune Global 500 companies.
As a high-level platform for interactions among business communities from different countries, the summit aims to jointly address global issues, nurture new growth points for international economic cooperation and reform the global economic governance system.
Delivering a speech at the opening ceremony, Chinese Vice President Han Zheng said China will continue to work with the rest of the international community, amid all the global uncertainty, to strengthen openness and exchanges, promote free trade and stimulate growth drivers for digital and green development.
The summit was organized by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT). Representatives from both trade and investment promotion agencies and business communities reached a series of consensus following extensive discussions.
"China is willing to share the opportunities of development with the global community. We welcome the business sectors of more and more countries to work together to build a stable global supply and industrial chain, and give full play to the further development of the green economy," said Ren Hongbin, the CCPIT chairman.
The summit also includes parallel forums focusing on smoothening supply chains, promoting exchanges between the United States and China on turning the "San Francisco Vision" into reality, and the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, among other issues.
The forum attendees spoke highly of China's contribution to the global market and its efforts to share the development opportunities with other countries.
"China is already integrated very closely into the global manufacturing supply chain. It provides a lot of inputs. And at the same time, China is also a very very big market, [as] 18 percent of the GDP, the global GDP, is China. Therefore, China has a very important role both as a part of the manufacturing chain and also as a part of the global market," said Osamu Onodera, vice chairman of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China
"[For] Italian companies, they focus on Chinese partners to promote the digital trade of the quality of their products. So this is one of the key elements to cooperate between Italian companies and the Chinese market," said Lorenzo Riccardi, chairman of China-Italy Chamber of Commerce.
The summit launched the Beijing Initiative, calling on accelerating world economic recovery through the WTO-centered multilateral trading system and maintaining the stability and smooth flow of industrial and supply chains through strengthening industrial specialization and collaboration.
The initiative also proposed to advance AI exchanges and cooperation in embracing the transformative force of AI, foster green and low-carbon development, and nurture mutually-beneficial and win-win business partnerships.
Global Trade, Investment Promotion Summit 2024 held in Beijing
Global Trade, Investment Promotion Summit 2024 held in Beijing
