Gaza Media Office: Gaza City faces an environmental catastrophe due to the Israeli aggression

Occupied Al-Quds, (ST) -The Gaza Information Office warned that Gaza City is facing a new environmental catastrophe added to the series of disasters caused by the Israeli occupation of Gaza Strip since it has launched its brutal aggression against Gaza on the seventh of last October.

The Head of the office, Salama Marouf clarified in a statement yesterday that this disaster is represented by the complete stoppage of all water wells in the city two weeks ago due to the depletion of the already scarce amounts of fuel that were available to Gaza municipality during the last period.

He indicated that in light of the inability of the municipal crews to operate the water wells that survived due to the barbaric bombing of the occupation, the entire city is now living in a state of extreme thirst due to water outage and the complete destruction of the desalination plant, more than 40 water wells, and 120 thousand linear meters of the city’s water networks.

Marouf called on the international community to put an end to the occupation’s crimes against the Palestinian service sectors, investigate the crimes committed by the occupation forces, provide fuel, and urgently resupply the Palestinians with water to save them from a state of extreme thirst and the health and environmental crisis that will worsen as a result of the water shortage.

For his part, Civil Defense spokesman in Gaza, Mahmoud Basal warned that the worsening cooking gas crisis portends a new humanitarian and health crisis for the lives of Palestinians who have been suffering catastrophic conditions since the start of the Israeli aggression on Gaza Strip. He called on the international community and all concerned parties to intervene urgently and put pressure on the occupation to allow the introducing of cooking gas and putting an end to this crisis.

Basal said in a statement that the Israeli occupation’s continued prevention of the entry of cooking gas into the afflicted Strip, especially to Gaza City and the northern Strip, for several months warns of a new humanitarian and health crisis in the country and causes many Palestinians to suffer from respiratory diseases due to the use of plastic and chemical materials to light fires from which the gases are emitted.

He pointed out that hundreds of cases of respiratory diseases have been recorded in hospitals as a result of residents’ reliance on lighting fires for several hours a day over the past six months.

Raghda Sawas