Another rainy season in Gaza has been adding to the woes of Palestinians in the besieged strip, with heavy rains and floods jeopardizing lives of tens of thousands of homeless citizens.
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"Look! Our life has become miserable!" Samira Shamali, Gaza resident, told photojournalists who were trying to capture the floods aftermath, as reported by the Washington Post. “I used to love the winter season when my family would gather indoors and share food and have fun, but all of this is gone, we are busy now of covering the house of plastic and curse the winter and the rain.”
The 34-year-old Palestinian, Shamali, was complaining about the misery of her beleaguered city where a week of heavy rains has caused floods. Coming in the wake of the destructive Israel war on the strip last summer, heavy rains are adding to the miserable situation in Gaza. Using plastic garbage filled with sand, Palestinian women and men in the Beach Refugee Camp are combating water and mud caused by heavy rains.
“This year it is worse than last year as the infrastructure of Gaza is weaker and more damaged, without real help by all parties, the situation will be catastrophic," a civil defense worker who was helping people stuck in the flooded streets said. Israel has launched relentless airstrikes against Gaza from July 8 to August 26, where more than 2,100 have been killed and thousands injured. Out of 2,131 Palestinians who died in the latest fighting, 501 were children, said the United Nations. About 70% of the children killed were under 12, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF.
The large scale of mass destruction in Gaza has left about 5,510 homes completely destroyed and about 31,000 partially damaged, forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes that were caught up in the Israeli air strikes. "Emergency" The miserable situation in Gaza over the past days has prompted the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to declare an "emergency" in the besieged strip.
"We are very concerned about such severe storms this early in the season and on the back of unprecedented damage and destruction caused by the recent conflict,” UNRWA’s Director of Operations Robert Turner in Gaza said in a statement obtained by Onislam.net. Nearly 63 schools, attended by 65,000 students in the strip, were closed besides other 43 schools in the Northern regions. “We are particularly concerned for those families still seeking adequate shelter and preparing for the winter months, and for the impact the flooding is already having on children unable to attend school," Turner said. Establishing an Area Emergency Operations room in Gaza, UNRWA will be supplying emergency fuel to municipalities, water, sanitation and health facilities, partially through the WASH and Health clusters (led by UNICEF and WHO). As the situation gets worse, Gazan officials called residents to vacate their homes or moving to upper floors.
"We fear a humanitarian catastrophe, and the reservoir flooding which will lead to dangers and disasters risks to the residents of the surrounding area," Gaza mayor Nizar Hijazi said, the Middle East Monitor reported. "The infrastructure of the Gaza Strip is weak and ill-equipped to receive any increased rainfall; because of the disaster caused by the increased rainfall last year and the recent war which destroyed a large part of the Strip."
