UAE begins pipeline project to ease Gaza water shortage
The United Arab Emirates has begun construction on a major pipeline to carry desalinated water from Egypt to southern Gaza, a news report says.
Technical teams sent by the UAE have started transporting equipment needed for the project, the Emirati state news agency WAM reported.
Earlier this week, COGAT – the Israeli defence ministry body overseeing the occupied Palestinian territory – said construction of the pipeline would begin in the coming days and is expected to take weeks.
The project would link a desalination plant in Egypt to the al-Mawasi area along Gaza’s coast and could supply about 600,000 people daily, COGAT said.
Access to clean drinking water is extremely limited across Gaza, forcing its 2.3 million residents to rely on salty, often undrinkable water. More than 80 percent of Gaza’s water infrastructure has been damaged during Israel’s war on Gaza.
After Israeli supply cuts, most people rely on polluted wells or sporadic NGO water deliveries, hindered by limited aid access.
“The water crisis in Gaza continues to deteriorate rapidly amid a severe fuel shortage, extensive infrastructure damage, and inaccessible water sources,” said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
More children need to be evacuated from Gaza for treatment: NGO
Steve Sosebee, executive director and co-founder at HEAL Palestine, says there are “tens of thousands” of wounded children in Gaza who need to be evacuated for medical care.
“[That’s] not counting those kids who have common injuries, common diseases, afflictions or medical conditions which normally could be treated within the Gaza health system but now have to go outside because the health system has been destroyed,” Sosebee told Al Jazeera.
With 37 people, including 11 Palestinian children and their mothers on their way to the US after being evacuated by HEAL Palestine, Sosebee said that the logistical process is “pretty huge”.
Yet while the organisation identifies children and works with families to submit their medical records abroad and sort out clearances with the Israeli and Jordanian officials, children are still caught in a mass starvation crisis.
“There is a point of no return for malnutrition. For children who have been suffering from malnutrition, they reach some point where they suffer irreversible damage to their immune system,” Sosebee warned.
