Flies and mosquitoes feast on Gaza's waste crisis

Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories: Every meal in Umm Nahed Abu Shar s tent in a Gaza camp is shared with a cloud of flies and accompanied by the ove...

Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories: Every meal in Umm Nahed Abu Shar's tent in a Gaza camp is shared with a cloud of flies and accompanied by the overpowering stench of sewage -- a growing threat alongside the ongoing war.

A report released by a European activist group on Thursday said the Gaza Strip is "drowning" in hundreds of thousands of tonnes of uncollected human waste and rubble from the Israel-Hamas war, which could soon spread to the surrounding region.

Amid rising summer temperatures, Abu Shar and her family are living a nightmare in their tent in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah, where authorities said this week that wastewater treatment stations had been turned off due to a lack of fuel.

"We are just suffering; we are not living," said the 45-year-old Abu Shar.

"The heat, the diseases, the flies, the mosquitoes and their hissing, it all hurts us," she told AFP.