October 15, 2023: According to Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for UNRWA, the UN organization for Palestinian refugees, some 500,000 people from Gaza have fled to UN shelters spread out across the region and are running out of water. She stated, “Gaza is running dry.”
As thousands of people gathered in the courtyard of the largest hospital in the besieged territory as a last resort from an impending Israeli ground offensive, water has run out at UN shelters throughout Gaza. Overwhelmed doctors have struggled to provide care for patients they fear will perish once generators run out of fuel.
Palestinian citizens in Gaza were fighting for their lives on Sunday in the face of an unprecedented Israeli offensive against the region in response to a Hamas attack earlier.
In addition to bombarding neighbourhoods with airstrikes and ordering the estimated 1 million population of the north to move south in advance of its impending invasion, Israel has shut off the supply of food, medicine, water, and electricity to Gaza.
More than 2,300 Palestinians have died since combat started last Saturday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has warned that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was already “extremely dire before these hostilities” and “now it will only deteriorate exponentially.”
