According to a UN spokesperson, Gazans are compelled to live in bombed-out structures or camp next to enormous piles of trash, and she decried the “unbearable” conditions in the border region on Friday.
The “extremely dire” living conditions in the Gaza Strip were detailed by Louise Wateridge of UNRWA, the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees.
“It’s really unbearable,” she told reporters in Geneva, via video-link from central Gaza.
Wateridge, who returned Wednesday after four weeks outside the territory, said that even in that time the situation had “significantly deteriorated”.
“Today, it has to be the worst it’s ever been. I don’t doubt that tomorrow again will be the worst it’s ever been,” she said.
Nearly nine months into the war between Israel and Hamas, Wateridge said the Gaza Strip had been “destroyed”.
She said she had been “shocked” on returning to Khan Yunis in central Gaza.
“The buildings are skeletons, if at all. Everything is rubble,” she said. “And yet people are living there again.
“There’s no water there, there’s no sanitation, there’s no food. And now, people are living back in these buildings that are empty shells,” with sheets covering the gaps left by blown-out walls.
With no bathrooms, “people are relieving themselves anywhere they can”.
