DayofPal—Jonathan Crickx, UNICEF Palestine’s chief of communication, said he saw barefoot children in soaked tents during a visit to a displacement camp in Deir Al-Balah, where many are sick and unprotected from the rain.
He explained that “The water is getting everywhere because those tents are mostly makeshift and are not protecting children.”
He said many children are sick, and after two years of relentless war, they are suffering without reprieve.
UNICEF and other agencies have seen a “slight improvement” in the amount of aid in Gaza in recent weeks, but the situation remains dire, according to Crickx.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said the UN and international aid groups have only been able to bring 15,600 tents into Gaza since the ceasefire began in October.
NRC added earlier this week that those tents have gone to help approximately 88,000 Palestinians as Storm Byron bore down on the Palestinian enclave. But 1.29 million people across Gaza are in need of shelter.
“At least 761 displacement sites hosting around 850,000 people are at risk of flooding,” NRC said. “International aid organisations remain blocked from bringing in relief and nearly 4,000 pallets of shelter materials have been rejected.”
Crickx clarified that UNICEF managed to distribute just 7,500 tents in Gaza, while hundreds of thousands of families remain in need.
He pointed out that up to 90 percent of infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed, adding that the UN estimates 1.5 million people are at risk.
“The scale of the disaster is huge. What we’re scared of is that there is very poor hygiene, and all that pouring rain could enable the appearance of waterborne diseases like acute diarrhoea,” he said, adding that many of the more than one million children in need have been repeatedly displaced with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.
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