(27 Jun 2024)
RESTRICTIONS SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Nuseirat, Central Gaza Strip - 20 June 2024
1. Various of children collecting leftover garbage
2. Garbage piles near tents of displaced people
3. Child collecting garbage
4. Close of garbage
5. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Abu Shadi Afana, displaced from Gaza:++SOUNDBITE STARTS ON SHOT 2-4++
"I wish the problem was only the smell. We are accustomed to garbage, but the problem is not the garbage. The ants, cockroaches, and flies that come out from under the ground. How do they come out? I don’t know. Rats walk between our legs. Where we can go? Look, here is the tent. No one gave us a tent and no one is caring about our camp in terms of food or drink, and beside all of this there is also garbage?"
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Deir Al Balah, Central Gaza Strip - 22 June 2024
6. Various of canals with sewage flowing through between tents of displaced
7. Close of sewage
8. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Jabr Rayhan, displaced from Jabaliya:++SOUNDBITE STARTS ON SHOT 7 AND PARTLY OVERLAID BY SHOT 9,10++
"8 to 9 months passed and we are dying a thousand times a day. Our children are dead, our families are dead, our homes are gone. Despite that, what we live here is more difficult, what we live here in Deir al-Balah and the displacement is more difficult. We hope that they will return us to the north, and die in our homes and on our lands better than stay here."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Deir Al Balah, Central Gaza Strip - 20 June 2024
9. Various of people carrying containers and standing in water contaminated with sewage
10. Young girl walking through water contaminated with sewage
STORYLINE:
Children in sandals trudge through water contaminated with sewage and scale growing mounds of garbage in Gaza’s crowded tent camps for displaced families.
People relieve themselves in burlap-covered pits, with nowhere nearby to wash their hands.
The filth surrounding them, people in the camps say, is just another inescapable reality of war — like pangs of hunger or sounds of bombing.
The territory’s ability to dispose of garbage, treat sewage and deliver clean water has been virtually decimated by eight brutal months of war between Israel and Hamas.
This has made grim living conditions worse and raised health risks for hundreds of thousands of people deprived of adequate shelter, food and medicine, aid groups say.
Hepatitis A cases are on the rise, and doctors fear that as warmer weather arrives, an outbreak of cholera is increasingly likely without dramatic changes to unsanitary living conditions.
The U.N., aid groups and local officials are scrambling to build latrines, repair water lines and bring desalination plants back online.
COGAT, the Israeli military body coordinating humanitarian aid efforts, said it's engaging in efforts to improve the “hygiene situation.” But relief can't come soon enough.
Over a million Palestinians had been living in hastily assembled tent camps in Rafah before Israel invaded in May.
Since fleeing Rafah, many have taken shelter in even more crowded and unsanitary areas across southern and central Gaza that doctors describe as breeding grounds for disease — especially as temperatures regularly reach 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).
The U.N. estimates nearly 70% of Gaza's water and sanitation plants have been destroyed or damaged by Israel's heavy bombardment. That includes all five of the territory's wastewater treatment facilities, plus water desalination plants, sewage pumping stations, wells and reservoirs.
AP Video shot by Abd Al Kareem Hana
Production by Wafaa Shurafa
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