The moment Merav Hania's daughter stopped loving kindergarten came when a cluster of colorful orbs floated toward her playground during recess. 

“Balloons!” said a pleased young Emma, her mother recalled. But another child, one who had heard the warnings from local police, knew better: “That’s a bomb!”

In recent months, hundreds of booby-trapped balloons — sometimes bearing the messages “I Love You” and “Happy Birthday” along with small improvised explosives dangling by a string — have descended on this and other communities downwind of the nearby Gaza Strip, according to Israeli police.

Most land in open countryside, and none has yet caused injury or death, something a local police commander described as a miracle bound to give way to a tragedy. Residents know the balloons are not as dangerous as the rockets long fired by militant groups in Gaza that send whole neighborhoods scrambling for bomb shelters. Israel’s military regularly unleashes powerful bombardments on Gaza in reprisal for those rockets.

Still, the escalation of this drifting menace — one of the ways in which militants in Gaza keep up a low-intensity armed resistance to Israel’s 14-year blockade of the Palestinian enclave — has taxed police departments, disrupted daily life and taken a psychological toll on those who live within reach of the Gaza breeze.

“They are terror balloons. There is no other name,” said Chai Fahima, head of the police bomb-disposal squad for this district just east of Gaza, where each landing can close streets and send families running for cover. “Their purpose is to terrify. But if it explodes near a person, near a child, it can kill.”

Read more: The Washington Post