Deir Al-Balah wells cease operation with no fuel for pumps

The Deir Al-Balah Municipality in the Gaza Strip has announced that all wells and storage tanks have stopped operating due to the lack of fuel required to run the pumps, the Palestinian Information Centre has reported.

The head of the Emergency Committee in the municipality described the failure to supply the diesel fuel needed by the municipalities as a war crime and a collective punishment of all the people of the Gaza Strip. In a press statement on Monday, he explained that the water system in the city of Deir Al-Balah is out of service due to the lack of diesel fuel, shutting down two water tanks and 19 wells, putting the lives of thousands of citizens at risk.

The official pointed out that 700,000 citizens and displaced persons in the city are exposed to health and humanitarian risks due to the water outage. Piles of waste, he said, are accumulating on the streets and in shelters, and many sewage ponds have developed on the roads.

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A joint statement issued by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and the Palestinian Water Authority in March said that the total water available at the time in the Gaza Strip was estimated at around 10-20 per cent of the total water available before the Israeli military offensive, such is its dependence on the availability of fuel.

The per capita share of water for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has decreased by 96.5 per cent during the war, as citizens in the Gaza Strip can barely obtain between 3 and15 litres of water per day amid the ongoing war.

The Israeli occupation army has been waging a genocidal war against Gaza since 7 October, killing 39,000 Palestinians and wounding almost 90,000, mostly children and women, with 10,000 missing, presumed dead, under the rubble of their homes. Around 1.9 million people have been displaced, according to the UN.

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