Google removes "Bomb Gaza" app from app store

Google is facing criticism for continuing to allow Android mobile users to download a game called “Bomb Gaza”, in which players are required to “drop bombs and avoid killing citizens”. The app, which was uploaded on 29 July, has been installed up to 1,000 times and received at least one report as “inappropriate”. As of Monday evening, the game was no longer available on Google Play.

The side-scrolling smartphone game allowed players to earn points by piloting an Israeli jet and dropping a bomb on the cartoony Hamas militants below, while also avoiding missile strikes.

"Utterly shameful. Real people, many of them children, are dying in Gaza. Many of those who haven’t been killed face life with debilitating injuries, bereavement and without homes. Their suffering is as real as yours or mine, and to make light of it like this speaks of your essential failure as a human. Shame on the creators of this game, and those who ‘play’ it," read one comment by user George Coote.

“We remove apps from Google Play that violate our policies,” a spokesman for Google told the Guardian, confirming that the game had been removed from the Google Play app store. The company did not specify which policy the game had violated.

John Hilary, executive director at the anti-poverty charity War on Want, said: “It is beyond belief that anyone could have come up with something so abhorrent at a time when Israel is engaged in a genocidal assault on the people of Gaza."

It is not the only game available on Google Play that involves bombing Gaza, including "Iron Dome", “Gaza Assault: Code Red” that tells users to “secure the region” by taking control of “an Israeli UAV equipped with powerful weapons in an attempt to secure the region”.