'We have nothing,' say families struggling to live

DEIR AL-BALAH/RAFAH, Gaza Strip — The tent camps stretch for more than 16 kilometers along Gaza's coast, filling the beach and sprawling into empty lots, fields and town streets.

Families dig trenches to use as toilets. Fathers search for food and water, while children look through garbage and wrecked buildings for scraps of wood or cardboard for their mothers to burn for cooking.

Over the past three weeks, Israel's offensive in Rafah has sent nearly a million Palestinians fleeing the southern Gaza city and scattering across a wide area. Most have already been displaced multiple times during the conflict in Gaza.

Men cleared away the charred debris of shelters and children salvaged food in Rafah on Monday after an Israeli strike torched a camp for displaced Palestinians.

"People were not just injured or killed, but charred," 24-year-old Mohammed Hamad told Agence France-Presse in the aftermath of the strike that killed at least 45 people.

"My cousin's daughter, a child no more than 13, was among the martyrs. She had no features at all because shrapnel tore off her face."

Patients were transferred to nearby field hospitals after being stabilized, said Samuel Johann, emergency coordinator of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders.

But "the health system was decimated and no health facility in Gaza can currently cope with an event with this many casualties", he said.

The situation has been worsened by a dramatic plunge in the amount of food, fuel and other supplies reaching the United Nations and other aid groups to distribute to the population. Palestinians have largely been on their own to resettle their families and find basic essentials for survival.

Lack of necessities

"The situation is tragic. You have 20 people in the tent, with no clean water, no electricity. We have nothing," Mohammad Abu Radwan, a schoolteacher in a tent with his wife, six children and other extended family, told The Associated Press.

"All of this destroys us mentally."

Families usually have to buy wood and tarps for their tents, which can run up to $500, not counting ropes, nails and the cost of transporting material, humanitarian group Mercy Corps said.

Tamer Saeed Abu'l Kheir said he goes out at 6 am every day to find water, usually returning around noon to the tent outside Khan Younis where he and his relatives live.

"Wood costs money, water costs money, everything costs money," his wife Leena Abu'l Kheir said. "I'm afraid I'll wake up one day and I've lost my children, my mother, my husband, my family."

Agencies via Xinhua