Summer heat brings new misery to Palestinians in Israel's Gaza campaign

Sweltering summer weather is worsening conditions in Gaza where nearly all the 2.3 million inhabitants have been driven from their homes by Israel’s military campaign and where there is almost no electricity and little clean water, Reuters reports.

Families living in tents, in crowded shelters in UN schools or crammed into private homes, face the rising summer temperatures without air conditioning, showers or a functioning health system amid rising rates of malnutrition and disease.

In a school classroom shared as a shelter among different families in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza Strip,  Amal Nsair, 38, is worried that the rising heat and humidity and the increase in mosquitoes and other insects will harm their health.

Her son cannot sleep and she has nothing to cool him except a fan made from cardboard. The family’s home was in Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza Strip, which they fled earlier in the conflict.

“My son’s body is full of heat. In the past I would wash him but I need water. I’m very worried about my husband’s health, too. He has lost half his weight from carrying water,” she said.

READ: Fuel shortages continue to hinder aid operations in Gaza: UN

Temperatures in Gaza this week are forecast above 30 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) and recent years have brought a series of lethal heat -waves across the Mediterranean as the summer advances.

Gaza’s electricity was largely provided from Israel, but this was cut off as soon as the war began, along with fuel for the Territory’s only power station. Diesel to supply private generators was largely exhausted soon afterwards.

The war began when the Palestinian group, Hamas, sent fighters across the border from Gaza on 7 October, killing more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing 253 hostages according to Israeli tallies.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

Israel’s military campaign began the same day and has levelled swathes of the enclave, destroying most infrastructure, and killing more than 37,600 Palestinians according to health authorities in Gaza.

“Insects and mosquitoes are biting us all night long. I don’t sleep so that I can apply cream on my child, any kind of ointment or cream so he does not get bitten by the mosquitoes. They are scratching all night,” said Nsair.

READ: 10 children lose one or two legs in Gaza every day, says UNRWA