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DesertFlower

(11,649 posts)
Tue Dec 17, 2013, 01:31 AM Dec 2013

gaza drowning.

According to the United Nations, over 10,000 Palestinians were displaced after a rare winter storm and torrential rains turned large swathes of the region into a "disaster area." At least two people are dead.

"Large swathes of northern Gaza are a disaster area with water as far as the eye can see. Areas around Jabalia have become a massive lake with two meter high waters engulfing homes and stranding thousands," UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness said in a statement published by the Ma'an News Agency Saturday.

An Israeli blockade, imposed in an attempt to unseat the Hamas-led government, limits the import of everything from building materials to inexpensive fuel leaving Palestinians in Gaza with widespread food insecurity, a shortage of potable water and the inability to power their homes and businesses—a tenuous situation, that relief workers say was exacerbated by the current crisis.

Before the storm hit, the 1.8 million people living in the Gaza strip have endured daily blackouts of around 12 hours since the territory's lone power plant was switched off last month due to a fuel shortage, Al Jazeera reports.

-snip-

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc161213.htm

this is a humanitarian crisis.

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