The UN has warned that nearly 1.7 million displaced Palestinians, about 80 percent of Gaza’s population, are living in extremely poor conditions across nearly 1,600 displacement sites, with acute shortages of water, shelter and basic services.
Citing the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told a news conference on Tuesday that “shelling, gunfire, bombing and air strikes continue to harm civilians across the Gaza Strip.”
He noted that UNICEF announced in a social media post that a 17-year-old girl, one of its Youth Champions, was killed while on her way to sit her high school exam.
“We reiterate that civilians, including children, must always be protected,” Dujarric said.
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He said that a newly released assessment of displacement sites found that at least 59,000 individual shelters house more than eight people each, while around 38,500 people are sleeping in the open.
“An estimated 600,000 people in the assessed sites lack sufficient access to drinking water,” he said, adding that “half of the sites lack visible drainage, and nearly half reported fire hazards near shelters.”
