Gaza population lacking water, facing famine risk
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Transcript
00:00 Children in Rafah queue up to fill their buckets - and hands - with water.
00:05 It's a rare sight in recent weeks.
00:07 The water comes from three plants built on the Egyptian side of the border
00:11 and has only recently started being pumped into the south of the Strip.
00:15 We were really suffering.
00:18 We would have to bring sea water to fill the tanks.
00:21 This water is very good in comparison.
00:24 We can actually drink it.
00:26 It tastes like sugar. It's drinkable. Look.
00:29 But without electricity or infrastructure,
00:31 it's close to impossible to distribute the little water available
00:35 beyond the border town of Rafah.
00:37 The UN says people in the south access less than two litres of water per day,
00:41 not only to drink, but to cook and wash -
00:44 a number far below the recommended requirement for survival.
00:48 Many are forced into deciding on whether to drink or eat.
00:52 A World Food Programme report exposes the scale of hunger in Gaza.
00:56 The entire population of Gaza, that's roughly 2.2 million people,
01:01 are in crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity.
01:05 26% of Gazans, that's more than half a million people,
01:10 have exhausted their food supplies and coping capacities
01:14 and face catastrophic hunger and starvation.
01:18 The humanitarian situation is exacerbated
01:21 by the destruction of sanitation facilities.
01:24 Even in the south, which is where the Israeli military
01:27 has told Palestinians to flee to,
01:29 the hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans live in squalor.
01:33 UNICEF warns the lack of clean water
01:35 means large-scale disease outbreaks are looming.