Gaza: Clean water crisis adds to new displacement misery, say aid teams

This article is published in association with United Nations.

Amid further evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military in Gaza, UN humanitarians issued a fresh warning on Monday over the dire sanitary emergency there and the urgent need for a mass polio vaccination campaign in the embattled enclave. 

UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund, issued a statement from Deir al-Balah in Gaza’s central area, where untreated sewage run-off formed large pools on the road next to shelters for forcibly displaced people.

“Sewage water is all over the streets,” said UNICEF spokesperson Salim Oweis, who highlighted the destruction of Gaza’s water and sanitation network, and its sewage treatment plants, since war erupted on 7 October, after Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel.

Daily disease threat

Diarrhoea and skin rashes continue to impact Gazans forced multiple times from their homes and shelters, according to UNICEF, amid increasingly urgent calls for a ceasefire to allow the delivery of oral polio vaccines after traces of the disease were discovered in sewage water in June and confirmed in July. 

It is understood that no one in the enclave has yet been vaccinated for polio.

The development came as the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of parts of the southern city of Khan Younis on Sunday, citing “significant terrorist activity and exploitation” of its self-designated “humanitarian zone”, including rocket fire towards Israel from the Aljalaa area. 

Evacuation plight

UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees, highlighted the impact of “multiple” evacuation orders issued since last Thursday on Gaza’s most vulnerable individuals in Khan Younis, some of the approximately 75,000 people believed to have been displaced: 

“There was one elderly man who was desperately trying to push his mobility scooter, which kept getting stuck in the sand,” Louise Wateridge, UNRWA senior communications officer, told UN News. 

“He had very few belongings on the scooter…He is pushing it through this horrible sandy road and some young men kept coming to help him dig it out of the sand to continue pushing it. But you could just see the exhaustion and the struggle that he was going through.”

More than 10 months into the war, Gazans remain desperate for clean water, food and medical help, while temperatures remain dangerously hot, Ms. Wateridge said. 

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“These people, they’ve lost absolutely everything. They don’t seem to be carrying much at all. Children were dragging empty water canisters because that’s one of the most precious items. Now anything that you can put water in, it is one of your most precious valuables…There were mattresses being carried, jerry cans and empty water cans and not much else, because people can only really carry what they can, in their hands.”

The UNRWA officer explained that families continue to seek shelter in parts of Deir al-Bala in central Gaza and Western Khan Younis further south. 

“Both areas are already heavily overcrowded, they have very limited shelters and services available and can barely accommodate the additional influx of displaced people,” Ms. Wateridge insisted.