Louise Wateridge, an UNRWA aid worker, said that a pile of waste weighing an estimated 100,000 tons was building up near people’s tents in central Gaza
“It’s among the population and it’s building up without anywhere to go. It just keeps getting worse”
GENEVA: Mounds of trash rotting in the heat are piling up close to where displaced people are sheltering in Gaza, a UN official said on Friday, raising fears about the further spread of disease.
Hundreds of thousands of Gazans who had fled to southern Gaza earlier in the more than 8-month conflict have been uprooted again since Israel expanded its military operations against Hamas to the southern city of Rafah in early May.
Louise Wateridge, an aid worker with United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), said that a pile of waste weighing an estimated 100,000 tons was building up near people’s tents in central Gaza.
“It’s among the population and it’s building up without anywhere to go. It just keeps getting worse. And with the temperatures rising, it’s really adding misery to the living conditions here,” she told journalists via video link from Gaza.
Israel has refused repeated requests to allow UNRWA to empty the main landfill sites, she said, meaning temporary ones are emerging, she added. Even if permission is granted, Wateridge said UNRWA’s humanitarian missions such as trash collection have all but halted due to Israeli refusals to allow fuel imports.
Israel’s COGAT, a branch of the military tasked with coordinating aid deliveries into Palestinian territories, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Israel, which launched its Gaza military operation after deadly Hamas attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, says it has expanded efforts to facilitate aid flows into Gaza and blames aid agencies for distribution problems inside the enclave. It controls fuel shipments into Gaza and has long maintained that there is a risk they are diverted to Hamas.
The World Health Organization’s Tarik Jašarević said the trash, along with the rising heat, a lack of clean drinking water and sanitation services, was adding to disease risks.
“It can lead to a number of communicable diseases appearing,” he said, mentioning that around 470,000 cases of diarrhea have been reported since the start of the war.
Wateridge, who arrived back in Gaza on Thursday after a four-week absence, said the situation had deteriorated significantly. She described the living conditions as “unbearable” with people sweltering under plastic sheets and cowering in bombed out buildings.
Huge mounds of rotting trash pile up around Gaza camps, UNRWA says
https://arab.news/9fw76
Huge mounds of rotting trash pile up around Gaza camps, UNRWA says
- Louise Wateridge, an UNRWA aid worker, said that a pile of waste weighing an estimated 100,000 tons was building up near people’s tents in central Gaza
- “It’s among the population and it’s building up without anywhere to go. It just keeps getting worse”
The West Bank soccer field slated for demolition by Israel
- The move is likely to eliminate one of the few spaces where Palestinian children are able to run and play
BETHLEHEM: Israeli authorities have ordered the demolition of a soccer field in a crowded refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, eliminating one of the few spaces where Palestinian children are able to run and play.
“If the field gets demolished, this will destroy our dreams and our future. We cannot play any other place but this field, the camp does not have spaces,” said Rital Sarhan, 13, who plays on a girls’ soccer team in the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem.
The Israeli military issued a demolition order for the soccer field on December 31, saying it was built illegally in an area that abuts the concrete barrier wall that Israel built in the West Bank.
“Along the security fence, a seizure order and a construction prohibition order are in effect; therefore, the construction in the area was carried out unlawfully,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Mohammad Abu Srour, an administrator at Aida Youth Center, which manages the field, said the military gave them seven days to demolish the field.
The Israeli military often orders Palestinians to carry out demolitions themselves. If they do not act, the military steps in to destroy the structure in question and then sends the Palestinians a bill for the costs.
According to Abu Srour, Israel’s military told residents when delivering the demolition order that the soccer field represented a threat to the separation wall and to Israelis.
“I do not know how this is possible,” he said.
Israeli demolitions have drawn widespread international criticism and coincide with heightened fears among Palestinians of an organized effort by Israel to formally annex the West Bank, the area seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel accelerated demolitions in Palestinian refugee camps in early 2025, leading to the displacement of 32,000 residents of camps in the central and northern West Bank. Human Rights Watch has called the demolitions a war crime. Israel has said they are intended to disrupt militant activity.
