KHAN YUNIS: Displaced Gazans had to use empty plastic bottles on Monday to try to remove sewage from their tents after a pipeline burst in the main southern city of Khan Yunis.
“All the tents were flooded with sewage water. This is no life,” said Abdullah Barbakh, surrounded by bombed out buildings in the Palestinian city which has been devastated by months of war.
“I implore all Arab countries and the entire world to see what is happening to us. We’re living in the middle of sewage.”
Residents removed sodden carpets from their tents as they began the long process of getting rid of the dirty water, while children waded through a river of sewage that cut through a main road.
The spill has made it almost impossible to live in the city, where piles of debris and massive concrete slabs from bombed-out buildings line the streets, residents said.
“The sewage has flooded over us. We can’t eat or drink, and we’re unable to sleep. We are sleeping in the streets,” said Abdul Samad Barbakh.
Khan Yunis was a focus of the fighting in the early months of the Israel-Hamas war, but now it has become a hub for displaced people, many of whom have been forced to flee many times during the conflict.
About 1.7 million people are now sheltering in Khan Yunis and in central areas of the Gaza Strip, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, also known as UNRWA.
Tens of thousands have sought shelter there after fleeing from Rafah in the south, where raging street battles between militants and Israeli forces have rocked entire neighborhoods.
Mohammad Ahmad Abdul Majid, who now lives in Khan Yunis after fleeing Gaza City, told AFP living conditions were so difficult that he was unable to sleep.
“We live in harsh conditions in tents, sleeping on bedding unfit for a human being. It’s not suitable to sleep on it for eight or nine hours during the night,” he said.
“Before the war we lived in a house that was comfortable and in a healthy environment. Today the situation has changed.”
Donkey carts loaded high with belongings dotted the streets.
Said Ashour, a local resident, told AFP he had to walk a long way just to find clean water.
“There’s no drinking water — we have to walk for a kilometer or two,” he said.
“There isn’t even anyone selling water on the streets. There isn’t even sea water.”
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,190 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Militants also took about 250 hostages, 120 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory bombardments and ground offensive have killed at least 36,479 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Workers in Khan Yunis told AFP they lacked the proper equipment to be able to repair the pipeline properly.
“We’re working to stop people suffering because of the sewage, but we don’t have the capabilities, material and equipment we need for the job,” local municipality worker Hossam Musa said.

BEIRUT: Lebanese official media said Israeli strikes on a car and a motorcycle in the country’s south killed two people Monday, with cross-border clashes intensifying in recent days.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah group, a Hamas ally, has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israel since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel sparked war in the Gaza Strip.
“An enemy drone strike targeted a motorcycle in Naqura,” a coastal town near the Israeli border, Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said, later reporting “one person was killed and another wounded.”
In another attack, “an enemy drone targeted a car” near the southern village of Zrariyeh, “killing one person,” the NNA said, also reporting Israeli strikes in the country’s east.
It did not say whether the dead were civilians or fighters.
Hezbollah said it launched “a squadron of explosive-laden drones” at northern Israeli army positions “in response to the assassination carried out by the Israeli enemy this afternoon in the Zrariyeh area.”
Israel has previously targeted Hezbollah fighters as well as allied Palestinian and Lebanese militants in cars and on motorcycles.
The violence came as Iran’s acting foreign minister Ali Bagheri was visiting Lebanon, where he was expected to meet Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Iran supports a number of armed groups in the region including the Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah and Palestinian factions including Hamas.
Bagheri was on his first foreign trip in the position since a helicopter crash last month killed Iran’s top diplomat Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, along with Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and other officials.
Also on Monday, the United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said she discussed with Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib the “urgency for the parties to return to the cessation of hostilities.”
On Sunday, Hezbollah said its fighters had bombarded two army positions in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights after deadly Israeli strikes on south Lebanon, which an official told AFP killed two shepherds.
Nearly eight months of violence have left at least 453 people dead in Lebanon, mostly fighters but including 88 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, at least 14 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed, according to the army.