in Gaza, displaced people survive in deplorable sanitary conditions

The enclave has become a huge open-air camp for displaced people where nothing works anymore and where living and hygienic conditions are now catastrophic.

Rare testimonies. Life has becomeapocalyptic” in areas of the south of the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli offensive against Rafah in early May, the UN was alarmed on Friday May 31. It is more than 30° in Gaza and this heat does not help anything to catastrophic living and hygiene conditions conducive to the spread of diseases.

The Israeli army bombs Rafah in the south, but no area is spared. There are the dead and the directly injured and then all the others who are slowly dying of illness due to deplorable health conditions. Thanks to Rami Al Maghari, one of the rare journalists present on site, displaced people tell their daily lives in the Al Maghazi refugee camp, in the center of Gaza.

This area was literally gutted by bombs. “The smell is nauseating, look at this crater and this water pouring into it, it’s disgusting. We suffer from allergies, we are devoured by mosquitoes, we can’t even sleep anymore”, testifies Jumeira. Khaled, another refugee, assures him: “The children got scabies“These refugees have been subjected to regular Israeli strikes since the end of December which have killed and injured some of the 30,000 people who crowded this half square kilometer before the war. The infrastructure is on the ground and the displaced survive in sanitary conditions. deplorable.

“Summer is coming and we can’t live indoors. But when we open the windows it smells like garbage. We don’t even have electricity to run a fan and ventilate.”

Khaled, a refugee

at franceinfo

So, with the few Palestinian Authority officials still there like Mohamed, the remaining residents are organizing to make the refugee camp a little less unsanitary. “Every day, 20 tons of waste are collected in Al Maghazi and dumped here in this landfill where 3,500 tons of waste are now accumulating. We hope that the war will stop soon so that we can reuse traditional landfills” , he explains.

Residents produced 1700 tonnes of waste per day before the war. But we must now also count the debris caused by the war: 37 million tonnes throughout the enclave according to the UN.