Heat And Thirst Drive Families In Gaza To Drink Water That Makes Them Sick

DEIR AL-Balah, Gaza Strip (AP) -In August heat for one hour to wake up early, after waking up, Rana Odeh returns to the tent with a blurred water jug. The sweat wipes out of the eyebrow and is strategic for how much departments he will make to his two young children. He’s just his color, probably well.

Thirst replaces the fear of disease.

He fills small bottles for his son and daughter and poured a sip of a tea cup for himself. The rest then adds to a Jerrycan.

Odeh, who was deported from his house in Khan Younis, said, uz We have to give it to our children because we don’t have an alternative. ” “It causes diseases for us and our children.”

Such scenes have become terrible routine MuwasiA displacement camp that expands in the center of Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people endure scorching summer heat. Sweat and dust -covered, parents and children chase water trucks every two or three days, fill the bottles, boxes and buckets and then match them.

Each drop is rational for drinking, cooking, cleaning or washing. Some reuse what they can do and save a few cloudy inches in JerryCans for everything that tomorrow brings or does.

When the water could not come, Odeh said his son and his son filled the bottles from the sea.

For 22 months since the Israeli attack started, Gaza’s water access has been gradually tense. Borders on fuel imports And electric HAVE PREVENTED OPERATION Salt purification plants during Infrastructure bottlenecks and pipeline damage A drunk delivery is clogged. The aquifers of Gaza were contaminated with the debris of sewage and bombed buildings. Aid groups and local public services say that wells are mostly inaccessible or destroyed.

Meanwhile, the water crisis helped to spread the widespread disease above Gaza’s rising hunger. UN, the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency, said in a statement on Thursday that health centers, now an average of 10,300 patients with infectious diseases per week, mostly contaminated water, he said.

Efforts to alleviate water shortage are in motion, but for many people, it is still shaded with the risk of what can arise before the new supply.

And thirst is growing only when carrying a wave of heat, Moisture and temperatures rise in Gaza On Friday, 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit).

Mahmud Al-Dibs, a father who replaced Muwasi from Gaza city, threw water from a rotten plastic bag, one of the ships used to carry water in camps.

“Outside the tents and hot in the tents, so we are forced to drink this water wherever we go,” he said.

Al-Dibs was among many people who said they had intentionally dried water on Associated Press.

Bushra Khalidi, a charity, a charity group working in Gaza, said that Bushra Khalidi said, Bushra Khalidi, an official who still has enough water to clean them, said Bushra Khalidi said.

Before the war, more than 2 million inhabitants received their waters from a resource patchwork. Some of them were patened by the national water public service of Israel by Mekorot. Some came from salt purification plants. Some were pulled from high saline wells and some were imported in bottles.

Every resource was in danger.

The Palestinians are more confident in the groundwater, which constitutes more than half of Gaza’s supply. According to Palestinian water officials and charity groups, well water can be historically painful, but still can be served for cleaning, bath or agriculture.

Now people have to drink.

Mark Zeitoun, General Manager of a Policy Institute Geneva Water Center, said that the effects of drinking dirty water are not always visible.

Zeitoun said, “You are mixed with untreated sewage drinking water and drinking it or washing your food with it, then you drink germs and you can get dysentery,” he said. “If you are forced to drink salty, bitter water, you just make your kidneys and then you continue dialysis decades. “

Deliveries say that some of the minimum humanitarian groups of less-15 liters (3.3 gallons) than an average of three liters of (12.5 cups) per person say that drinking, cooking and basic hygiene are necessary. In February, acute juicy diarrhea was less than 20% of the diseases reported in Gaza. According to UN Children’s Agency UNICEF, it rose to 44%until July and increased the risk of serious dehydration.

At the beginning of the war, residents said that the delivery of Israel’s water company Mekorot was restricted – Israel’s claim that it rejected. Air attacks destroyed some transmission pipelines, one of Gaza’s three salt purification facilities.

According to UNICEF, the troops damaged or cut into bomber and advancing troops – up to the point that only 137 of Gaza’s 392 wells are accessible. Water quality from some wells with water quality, sewage, rubble of fragmented buildings and the remnants of ammunition spent.

Fuel shortage forced the system, slowed down the pumps and water -carrying trucks in the well. Aid groups and officials say that the remaining two salt purification facilities work well below the capacity to stop from time to time.

In recent weeks, Israel has taken some steps to reverse the damage. Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel told Associated Press to Gaza through two of Mecorot’s three pipelines and reconstructed one of the salt purification facilities to the electric network of Israel.

Nevertheless, plants have revealed much less than the war, Gaza’s coastal municipalities, the head of the water service of the Water Service Monther Shoblaq, told the AP. This forced him to make impossible choices.

Benefit gives priority to taking water to hospitals and people. But this sometimes means withholding Water required for sewage treatment, This can trigger neighborhood backups and increase health risks.

Water did not lead to the same global anger as the food limits entering Gaza. But Shoblaq warned a direct line between crisis and loss of life.

“It is clear that you can survive for a few days without food, but you can survive without water,” he said.

After Israel’s steps, water access is fixed. The aid workers were hopeful that the situation would not worse and would not heal.

Southern Gaza can provide more relaxation than a salt purification facility financed by the United Arab Emirates opposite the border in Egypt. Cogat, the Israeli military organ responsible for humanitarian aid to Gaza, said that the equipment allowed the equipment to build a pipeline at the facility and that the delivery could start within a few weeks.

The facility would not be connected to Israel for power, but it will control the entry of water to Gaza for the predictable future, as Israel has kept transitions.

However, aid groups warn that access to water and other aids may be disrupted by plans to launch a new attack in some of the latest areas other than Israel’s military control. These areas include Muwasi with Gaza City and most of the Gaza population.

In Muwasi’s tent camps, people are in line for the sporadic arrival of water trucks.

Hosni Shaheen, whose family was displaced from Khan Younis, sees the water he drinks as a last resort.

“It causes stomach cramps without exception for adults and children,” he said. “You don’t feel safe when your children drink.”

Metz reported from Jerusalem. Alon Berstein contributed to reporting from Israel Kerem Shahalom. ___

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