From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
City in Gaza says wastewater treatment halted due to fuel shortages
Wastewater pumping stations in one of Gaza’s main cities stopped working today because fuel had run out, the local authority says, expressing fears that disease could rapidly spread.
Tens of thousands of people displaced by the Israel-Hamas war have sought shelter in Deir al-Balah, and city authorities say more than 700,000 people could be at risk from a “health and environmental crisis.”
“Deir al-Balah municipality announces the halt of water waste pumping stations because stocks of fuel necessary for their functioning are exhausted,” says a city statement.
It predicted that “roads will be flooded by wastewater” and “diseases will spread.”
Gaza has had no electricity supplies since the war was unleashed by the October 7 Hamas assault on Israel. The fuel-powered waste plants treat water that is then put into the Mediterranean.
“Nineteen pits and two large reservoirs are unusable in Deir al-Balah,” Ismail Sarsour, an official with the city’s emergency committee, says ahead of the release of the statement.
He says the stations handle wastewater for more than 140 points of shelter where tens of thousands of people have taken refuge.
The Palestinian Authority’s water department, the PWA, which is based in Ramallah in the West Bank, said recently it had arranged for tens of thousands of liters of fuel to enter Gaza.
Israel said this month that, with help from the UN children’s agency UNICEF, it has connected one desalination plant in southern Gaza to its electricity network. It is unclear if the plant has started working.
The Palestinian Authority also said that it expected electricity supplies to start again in central Gaza in the “coming days” to power public infrastructure. Israeli authorities have not confirmed the move.
