Investigating claim IDF left behind 'booby-trapped toys' to kill children in Gaza

In November 2025, a claim (archived) circulated online that retreating Israeli forces in Gaza left behind "booby-trapped toys" designed to attract and kill children.

Israeli military drew back forces in parts of Gaza under a ceasefire agreement proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump. The claim circulated mainly on Facebook (archived) and Instagram (archived) via reports by media outlets that cover the Middle East. Middle East Monitor, a group that monitors and lobbies on behalf of journalists, wrote on Facebook:

The Director General of Health Affairs in the Gaza Strip, Munir Al-Bursh, has revealed that Israeli forces left behind booby-trapped dolls and toys designed to attract children. He said this shows a new face of the ongoing genocide, despite the ceasefire that has been in place for more than three weeks.

Snopes readers also wrote in to ask about the claim.

As Middle East Monitor reported, the claim appeared to originate from the Facebook page of Munir Al-Bursh, a senior Gaza Health Ministry official. Al-Bursh wrote a post (archived) on Nov. 2, 2025, titled "Bombs Disguised as Toys," that claimed "teddy bears, dolls, and colorful balls planted with explosives" left behind by the "occupation army" killed children in Gaza.

The post about the purported "toys turned to traps" did not state when the alleged incidents took place, how many children were supposedly harmed or which hospitals treated victims.

Snopes reached out to Gaza's Ministry of Health for additional details. Our inquiry requested supplementary evidence to substantiate Al-Bursh's claim — such as photographs, videos, audio or written documentation — and any insight into how he learned of the alleged explosives. Shortly before his Facebook post, Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based international news network, reported on the purported "booby-trapped toys," citing information from unnamed Palestinian police officers and two Gaza families who said they were affected by the hidden explosives. We reached out to that news outlet for more details on its reporting.

We have not received responses from Gaza's Ministry of Health or Al Jazeera, though we will update this report if that changes.

Because Snopes did not have evidence to independently verify the claim, we did not rate it.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) press office said it would not comment on the rumor without "specific details about the incidents." 

A spokesperson for Al-Haq, a non-governmental human rights organization based in the West Bank, told Snopes over email it did not rule out the idea that Israeli forces had left behind "booby-trapped" toys but was carrying out its own research to verify the claims.

Hamas, a political party and militant group that the U.S. State Department designated as a "foreign terrorist organization" in 1997, runs all government bodies in Gaza. 

At the time of this writing, Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire in its ongoing war with Israel.

Two families reported injuries from explosives disguised as other items

Al Jazeera's report, published on Nov. 1, 2025, claimed the Israeli military left behind explosives "disguised as food cans, children's toys, and telephone casings," citing unnamed police and security officials. 

Because the report did not name the police officers from which it supposedly obtained information, Snopes was unable to to track those sources down to independently verify their claims.

The report said "no images of explosives in the form of toys or phone casings have been documented so far." 

The Al Jazeera report included quotes from two families who said they were affected by the explosives disguised as other items. Tawfiq Al-Sharbasi reportedly said an object his two 6-year-old grandchildren "thought was a toy" suddenly exploded in their hands, injuring both of them. The Hammad family in Khan Younis reportedly said an item that appeared to be a can of food injured five relatives, including children, when it exploded.

Al-Sharbasi also spoke to Agence France-Presse and The Associated Press about the alleged incident involving his grandchildren. According to the AP, he said the children discovered a round object that was "like a toy" while playing, but the item exploded when the children touched it.

Officials in Gaza's security forces reportedly told Al Jazeera they do not have the right equipment to detect and disarm explosives disguised as other items.

The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS), a UN service that aims to limit threats of mines and explosives, has repeatedly issued warnings about the dangers of unexploded ordnance in Gaza.

We asked UNMAS if it has documented instances of the Israeli military using explosives disguised as toys in Gaza and await a reply.

According to a report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (an nonprofit that serves Europe, the Middle East and the North Africa region), Israeli forces dropped more than 70,000 tons of explosives on Gaza since the start of the war. A portion of them did not explode, according to the United Nations Mine Action Service, which estimated that roughly 90% did detonate.

In an October 2025 statement, Nicholas Orr, an explosive ordnance disposal expert for Humanity & Inclusion in Gaza, an independent disability charity, described Gaza as "a horrific, unmapped minefield."

Claims that Israeli forces used explosives that look like toys or food cans to injure people in Gaza circulated in October 2025, weeks before Al-Bursh's Facebook post. At that time, the AFP debunked a set of images and videos supposedly showing the disguised explosives. The outlet concluded the images were real but taken out of context. (That report did not make a judgement on the underlying claim: that the Israeli military left behind "booby-trapped toys" designed to attract and kill children in Gaza.)

According to that report and the Middle East Eye, a UK-based news outlet reporting on the Middle East, Israeli forces denied accusations in the late 1990s that they used bombs disguised as children's toys in Southern Lebanon.

Another report from Anadolu Agency, a Turkish state-run news agency, from May 2025, claimed two children had been injured by an exploding object they thought was a toy. According to that report, Hassan Al-Shaer, the medical director of Gaza's Al-Shifa Medical Complex, said the hospital received "many" patients injured as a result of exploding items like "cans of meat or sardines" or "children's toys."

Snopes previously investigated a claim that the Israeli military killed Palestinians by luring them towards drones playing the sound of crying infants.

DeepL.com provided translations from Arabic into English for this report.