Besieged Gaza Strip running short of bread and drinking water

by Euronews26 October 2023

The Israel military’s aerial assault and the government’s total blockade of the Gaza Strip is stripping Palestinians of even basic needs.
”We are putting a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said soon after the deadly Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October.
Israel’s war with the militant group has upended the lives of more than two million people, and killed almost 6,500 civilians, according to Palestinian authorities.
This week, Tel Aviv allowed 54 trucks carrying UN supplies of water, food and medicine to enter Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah border crossing.
The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, told a peace summit in Cairo that what has been delivered is not enough.
”The people of Gaza need a commitment for much, much more – a continuous delivery of aid to Gaza at the scale that is needed,” Guterres said.
Call for humanitarian ceasefire
He called for a humanitarian ceasefire to rescue Gaza from what he described as a ”godawful nightmare”.
In the Jan Younis refugee camp, people wait in long queues to buy bread. Some of the people living there are displaced from northern Gaza.

One of them, Ibrahim Sorour, said about 80 people are living inside one house.
He described the difficulties he has encountered buying bread.
”Every day I come from 4am and wait five hours until I get my share of bread. Every day I hear news of bombing next to bakeries, in the streets, or even in ordinary homes and this makes me afraid to go out.
”From my house, even if there is no bombing, I leave the house at dawn before daylight, and then I hear the sound of reconnaissance planes that are always flying above us. For me, I feel more afraid of this sound that makes me feel that I am always under surveillance. This is real horror, but there is no alternative. We need food and bread,” he said.
Many Palestinians who followed Israel’s orders to evacuate northern Gaza and move south left behind all of their belongings.
We fled from our homes and did not take anything with us,” Shifa Tabsh said.
”The next day we learned that our house had been destroyed, and now we have absolutely nothing. No shelter, no mattresses, no pillows, nothing.”
With fuel banned from entering Gaza, there are frequent power outages; drinking water is being rationed.
Saeb Laqan, from the Khan Younis Municipality Water Department, said the Gaza Strip residents are facing a humanitarian catastrophe.
”There is no water to pump into pipes, neither through wells nor distribution at all. We have zero fuel stocks, and there is also no electricity. Therefore we are facing a humanitarian catastrophe if the world and everyone does not intervene,” he said.
( Source Euronews)

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