Gaza's despair: 'Everyone is just concentrating on survival'

Shelters run by the United Nations in Gaza are so crowded that it is impossible to count all those needing food, water, medicine and other basics, administrators say, even as displaced people fleeing fighting and bombardments continue to arrive.

- Jason Burke

"It is a terrible, terrible situation. There is no room even to sleep on the floor. There is one toilet for 700 or 800 people. No bread, no stoves for cooking. We are drinking irrigation water," one UN official at a compound in the southern city of Khan Younis told the Guardian last night.

"No one can get an accurate number of IDPs [internally displaced persons] here. We know nothing about what happens outside. Everyone is just concentrating on survival," said the official, who was not authorised to speak to the media..

With a conflict that began with Hamas's murderous assault on southern Israel on 7 October, which killed 1,400, now entering a second month, the humanitarian toll from Israel's attack on the territory has been enormous. The Hamas-run health authority has said 10,022 people have died in Gaza, including 4,104 children.

Nur Hatib, 33, a kindergarten teacher, said everyone in the compound, a vocational training centre that now houses around 25,000 people, was terrified by the continuing bombardment in Gaza. The constant noise of airstrikes and reports of attacks close to shelters had sown panic.

"Of course we are frightened. We have our babies and children with us. Every parent in the world wants to protect their children and we cannot," Hatib said.

"My six-year-old daughter wants to know when she will go home so she can go back to reading and writing which she loves. I try to give her hope and I say of course you will go back to school, but I don't know how this will be possible."