Lives being lost while waiting for food in the ‘hungriest place on Earth'
A month after the launch of a new Israeli-backed aid system for the Gaza Strip, reaching the heavily guarded distribution hubs has become a life-risking endeavour for Palestinians, hampering efforts to get enough food to a hungry population.
Deadly violence has erupted frequently around the approaches to the aid sites,
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Otago Daily Times
06-08-2025
- Otago Daily Times
Thirst hits Gaza as clean water crisis takes hold
Weakened by hunger, many Gazans trek across a ruined landscape each day to haul all their drinking and washing water - a painful load that is still far below the levels needed to keep people healthy. Even as global attention has turned to starvation in Gaza, where after 22 months of a devastating Israeli military campaign a global hunger monitor says a famine scenario is unfolding, the water crisis is just as severe according to aid groups. Though some water comes from small desalination units run by aid agencies, most is drawn from wells in a brackish aquifer that has been further polluted by sewage and chemicals seeping through the rubble, spreading diarrhoea and hepatitis. Israeli pipelines that once supplied Gaza with much of its clean water are now dry. Israel stopped all water and electricity supply to Gaza early in the war. Although it resumed some supply later, pipelines were damaged and Gaza water officials say none has entered recently. COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, did not respond to a request for comment on whether Israel is supplying water. Most water and sanitation infrastructure has been destroyed and pumps from the aquifer often rely on electricity from small generators - for which fuel is rarely available. Moaz Mukhaimar, aged 23 and a university student before the war, said he has to walk about a kilometre, queuing for two hours, to fetch water. He often goes three times a day, dragging it back to the family tent over bumpy ground on a small metal handcart. "How long will we have to stay like this?" he asked, pulling two larger canisters of very brackish water to use for cleaning and two smaller ones of cleaner water to drink. His mother, Umm Moaz, 53, said the water he collects is needed for the extended family of 20 people living in their small group of tents in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. "The children keep coming and going and it is hot. They keep wanting to drink. Who knows if tomorrow we will be able to fill up again," she said. Their struggle for water is replicated across the tiny, crowded territory where nearly everybody is living in temporary shelters or tents without sewage or hygiene facilities and not enough water to drink, cook and wash as disease spreads. The United Nations says the minimum emergency level of water consumption per person is 15 litres a day for drinking, cooking, cleaning and washing. Average daily consumption in Israel is around 247 litres a day according to Israeli rights group B'Tselem. Bushra Khalidi, humanitarian policy lead for aid agency Oxfam in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories said the average consumption in Gaza now was 3-5 litres a day. Oxfam said last week that preventable and treatable water-borne diseases were "ripping through Gaza", with reported rates increasing by almost 150% over the past three months. Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza and says it provides adequate aid for the territory's 2.3 million inhabitants. QUEUES FOR WATER "Water scarcity is definitely increasing very much each day and people are basically rationing between either they want to use water for drinking or they want to use a lot for hygiene," said Danish Malik, a global water and sanitation official for the Norwegian Refugee Council. Merely queuing for water and carrying it now accounts for hours each day for many Gazans, often involving jostling with others for a place in the queue. Scuffles have sometimes broken out, Gazans say. Collecting water is often the job of children as their parents seek out food or other necessities. "The children have lost their childhood and become carriers of plastic containers, running behind water vehicles or going far into remote areas to fill them for their families," said Munther Salem, water resources head at the Gaza Water and Environment Quality Authority. With water so hard to get, many people living near the beach wash in the sea. A new water pipeline funded by the United Arab Emirates is planned, to serve 600,000 people in southern Gaza from a desalination plant in Egypt. But it could take several more weeks to be connected. Much more is needed, aid agencies say. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said the long-term deprivations were becoming deadly. "Starvation and dehydration are no longer side effects of this conflict. They are very much frontline effects." Oxfam's Khalidi said a ceasefire and unfettered access for aid agencies was needed to resolve the crisis. "Otherwise we will see people dying from the most preventable diseases in Gaza - which is already happening before our eyes."
NZ Herald
23-07-2025
- NZ Herald
Delicate fragments of frescoes on Roman-era plaster are recovered and gradually reassembled
Pieces are embellished with images of lyres, candelabras, flowers, white cranes, and native plants. One is illustrated with the face of a woman in tears, recognisable by her Flavian-period (AD 69 to 96) hairstyle. Four years ago, the plaster was recovered during an excavation at a construction site in Southwark, just south of the Thames. An archaeologist from the Museum of London Archaeology at a construction site where fragments of painted wall plaster that date to the early Roman occupation of the area around London, which began in AD 43, were found. Photo / Museum of London Archaeology via the New York Times The scraps filled 120 assorted boxes. Li's job is to carefully arrange, categorise and restore the original artwork. The frescoes that have emerged, the most colossal of which measures 4.8m by 3m, were hidden from view for more than 1800 years. The museum's haul of discarded Roman-era plaster is the largest ever amassed in the English capital. Rob Symmons, the curator of the extravagant Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex, called the site 'a discovery of the first magnitude'. It is not unusual for painted wall plaster to be recovered from Roman archaeological sites, but rarely is it found in quantities that it was in Southwark, he said. 'Also, it's unusual for excavators to have the time and expertise to attempt reconstructions like the one that Han undertook.' Fragments of floral decoration from a section of the plaster walls. Photo / Museum of London Archaeology via the New York Times The Southwark plaster once adorned at least 20 internal clay walls of what is believed to have been either a luxurious private villa or an upmarket inn for state couriers and officials passing through Londinium, the precursor of modern London. 'When the structure was demolished, material from different walls jumbled together and was dumped into a large pit,' Li said. 'When you are salvaging materials from a masonry wall, the plaster tends to break apart or crumble. It's almost impossible to reconstruct the walls in their entirety, but you can reconstruct enough to see what the schemes are.' The Romans established Londinium shortly after Roman legions, acting on the orders of Emperor Claudius, invaded parts of Britain. A section of the plaster walls found that date to the early Roman occupation of the area around London. Photo / Museum of London Archaeology via the New York Times The district in which the building was found is described by Andrew Henderson-Schwartz, a Mola administrator, as a vibrant and prosperous suburb. 'It was the Beverly Hills of Roman London,' he said. 'This is a place they intend to stay and Romanise.' The occupation lasted until AD 410, when the soldiers were withdrawn. Their Saxon successors neglected the area. By the Middle Ages, Southwark, outside the control of London's laws, was known as a place where one could find blood sports such as cockfighting and bearbaiting, alongside brothels and theatres. In 2021, the plaster dumping site was dug up in preparation for development of the property. The following February, a large mosaic decorated with guilloche patterns and Solomon's knot motifs was unearthed. A year later, the excavation yielded remnants of the most intact Roman mausoleum ever discovered in Britain. Graffiti on one of the plaster walls depicts a crying face. Photo / Museum of London Archaeology via the New York Times Li noted that the lower portions of the plaster walls, known as dadoes, were frequently made to look like stone. Some patterns mimic costly Egyptian porphyry, a volcanic rock distinguished by its purplish hue and crystal inclusions, and frame them with veins of African giallo antico, a type of yellow marble. Although the names of the interior decorators are not known, the researchers discovered a tabula ansata, a carving of a decorative tablet sometimes used to sign artworks, scored with the Latin word 'fecit,' meaning 'has made this'. Such maker's marks are usually seen on ceramics in Roman London but not wall plaster. A section of the plaster walls found that date to the early Roman occupation of the area around London. Photo / Museum of London Archaeology via the New York Times 'Unfortunately, the section bearing the painter's identity was snapped off,' Li said. Two other fragments were joined together to reveal an etching of a near-complete Greek alphabet. While Roman wall painters in Britain incorporated elements from other imperial outposts such as Xanten, Cologne, and Lyon, some aspects of their art were distinctly British. One fragment initially interpreted as grapes is now understood to depict mistletoe, demonstrating that the artists applied Roman artistic conventions but with a local, British colour palette. Bright yellow panels with pale green borders dominate the middle layers of the frescoes. That decorative touch has surfaced at only a handful of other locations across the island, including the Fishbourne Roman Palace, located roughly 100km southwest of the dig. Li recently visited the palace to observe the wall plaster. He and Symmons suspect that the same hand, or at least artistic school, was responsible for both sets of frescoes. 'When you're looking at two paintings that look identical, down to the stroke, down to the pigment, it really kind of makes you feel like you've discovered something amazing,' Li said. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Franz Lidz Photographs by: Museum of London Archaeology ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
Scoop
21-07-2025
- Scoop
Terror And Chaos For Gaza's People Now Entering The ‘Death Phase'
21 July 2025 In an alert, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, relayed desperate testimonies from its colleagues who are also struggling to survive in the war-torn enclave. 'We're in the death phase,' one UNRWA worker said. ' Everything around people at the moment is death, whether it's bombs or strikes, children wasting away in front of their eyes from malnourishment, from dehydration, and dying.' Doctors and nurses who continue to work in the UN agency's clinics and medical centres ' are watching children disappear and die in front of their eyes, and there's absolutely nothing that they can do about it,' the worker continued. Civilians 'faced sniper and tank-fire' The development comes after desperate Gazans seeking aid came under fire at the weekend 'from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire', according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP). In a detailed statement after the incident on Sunday 20 July, it explained that a 25-truck lorry convoy crossed the Zikim border point in northern Gaza 'destined for starving communities'. Shortly after passing the final checkpoint after the Zikim crossing point, the convoy encountered large crowds of civilians waiting to access food supplies. This was when the shooting began, leaving 'countless' Gazans dead, WFP said, echoing reports by the health authorities. Condemning the incident, WFP noted that the victims 'were simply trying to access food to feed themselves and their families on the brink of starvation'. A great tragedy Speaking later on Monday in a briefing to journalists in New York, WFP's director of emergencies Ross Smith called the incident 'one of the greatest tragedies we've seen for our operations in Gaza and elsewhere while we're trying to work.' The UN agency said furthermore that the violence had happened 'despite assurances from Israeli authorities that humanitarian operational conditions would improve; including that armed forces will not be present nor engage at any stage along humanitarian convoy routes.' Without such fundamental guarantees, it will not be possible to continue providing life-saving support across the Gaza Strip, WPF said, its reaction coming a day after a reported 36 people seeking aid were reportedly killed close to a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation hub run by the Israeli and US in the south of the Strip. Deir Al-Balah evacuation shock In central Gaza's Deir Al-Balah, meanwhile, 50,000 to 80,000 people have been impacted by a mass displacement order issued by the Israeli military – the first since war erupted on 7 October 2023. 'The new order cuts through Deir Al-Balah all the way to the Mediterranean Sea, further splintering the Strip,' OCHA said. 'It will limit the ability of the UN and our partners to move safely and effectively within Gaza, choking humanitarian access when it is needed most.' UN staff remain in Deir Al-Balah across 'dozens of premises' whose coordinates have been shared with the warring parties. 'These locations – as with all civilian sites – must be protected, regardless of displacement orders,' OCHA insisted, as Israeli tanks reportedly moved into southern and eastern areas of the city. According to reports, this may be where some of the remaining hostages seized in Hamas-led terror attacks on 7 October 2023 in Israel may still be held. Gaza cut in two The latest evacuation order means that almost 88 per cent of Gaza is impacted by displacement orders or falls within Israeli-militarized zones. Some 2.1 million civilians who have been uprooted multiple times are now squeezed into the little remaining space, where essential services have collapsed. 'There's nowhere for [Gazans] to escape. They are trapped,' said UNRWA Senior Emergency Officer Louise Wateridge. 'They cannot leave the Gaza Strip. They're trying to keep their children alive. They're trying to keep themselves alive.' In comments to UN News, the veteran humanitarian explained that no food is available and only very limited water, explaining why so many desperate Gazans risk their lives to fetch aid from the few distribution centres and arrival points still operational. 'Children are malnourished, they're dehydrated, they are dying in front of their [parents'] eyes,' Ms. Wateridge continued. 'The bombs and the strikes are continuing; there's no way to run, there's nowhere to hide. There's no way to escape there.'
