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Thirsty families in Gaza eke out trickle of water

Most supplies cut off by Israeli siege, leading to disease and warnings that water is about to run out

Securing water has become a huge challenge for Palestinian families in the territory, home to 2.3mn people, where the temperature on Sunday was 31 degrees. People are being forced to drink dirty water, according to UN agencies, which have reported cases of diseases spread by contaminated water being drunk and poor sanitary conditions.

Juliette Touma, spokesperson for UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestinian relief, said that across Gaza “people have either no water at all or limited supplies”. Even in UNRWA shelters, drinking water was scarce, she added.

Israel has linked the siege to the more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas into Gaza, two of whom were freed this week. “No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli hostages are returned home,” Israel’s energy minister Israel Katz said on social media on October 12.

The strip normally receives fresh water from a mixture of wells, a pipeline from Israel and desalination plants on the Mediterranean. However, fuel and power shortages have hit the plants and water pumping facilities, aid agencies say.

Israel is allowing only a restricted and insufficient water supply through its pipeline to southern Gaza, UN officials say, for about three hours a day.

UNRWA has warned that worse is to come. In three days the organisation “will run out of fuel, critical for our humanitarian response across the Gaza Strip,” it said on Sunday.

“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries. No fuel will further strangle the children, women and people of Gaza.”

https://www.ft.com/content/22e939a4-...0-79dd08901f98