UNRWA denounces that Israel prevents them from collecting garbage from landfills in the Gaza Strip

June 29 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) denounced this Friday that the Israeli authorities are preventing the collection of garbage from landfills in the Gaza Strip, causing “extremely terrible” sanitary conditions that raise fears. greater spread of diseases.

“Thousands of tons of smoldering rubbish are piled up between shelters in stifling heat. Families are searching through the rubbish for salvageable materials; children are flying kites. Everyone you speak to is absolutely exhausted,” said UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge.

In his account on the social network X, Wateridge has accused Israel of “repeatedly refusing” to allow the agency to “empty” the main landfills in the Strip. Thus, other temporary landfills are emerging that are also not being cleaned due to “Israeli limitations on the import and distribution of fuel.”

As a result, he denounced, Gazans live “among garbage.” “The problem continues to get worse. And with the temperature rising, the misery that people have to endure is increasing. People build shelters with plastic and the temperature inside is even higher than outside. The conditions are really unbearable,” he said.

In this sense, the World Health Organization (WHO) has already warned on several occasions of the “combination” of diseases, hunger and lack of hygiene in the Gaza Strip, which has led the population to experience “dizzying rates” of infectious disease outbreaks.

According to this organization, some 470,000 cases of diarrhea have been recorded in the Gaza Strip since the military offensive by the Israeli Army began in response to the attacks by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on October 7.