Garbage piles add to challenges as Gaza residents return home under truce

(4 Feb 2025)
RETRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gaza City, Gaza Sttip - 03 February 2025
1. Various of people walking alongside piles of garbage
2. Various of piles of garbage filling the road
3. People walking near garbage
4. Various of piles of garbage on both sides of the road
5. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Abu Tareq Al-Arouq, from Gaza City:
"These cause skin diseases for children and diseases for the elderly and those with chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart diseases. This has led to a crime greater than war."
6. Various of people walking near piles of garbage
7. Various of street covered in mud
8. Various of piles of garbage spread in the streets
9. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Abu Saad Saleh, from Gaza City:
"We suffer from the garbage here, as a result of the circumstances and the war. Where can people dispose of it? So they are throwing it in the streets, the containers were not there, and at the other places the same thing happened"
10. Various of garbage piled up on the side of the road
11. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Abu Saad Saleh, from Gaza City:
"It spreads diseases among people, and itching and coughing among children. People burn it and the smoke enters our homes. It has destroyed us. For God’s sake, remove this garbage from us."
12. Piles of garbage, children collecting waste from the garbage
13. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Rabah al-Kord, from Gaza City:
"We burn waste to get rid of mosquitoes. When we put food, mosquitoes and flies come to it, and all of this causes diseases. We burn to clean what is around us. It is true that fire and smoke affect us, but their effect is temporary and after that we are done with waste and diseases."
14. Various of man burning garbage in the street

STORYLINE:
Amid the piles of rubble from the massive destruction of Gaza, huge amounts of garbage is also adding to Palestinian woes.

With no refuge collections in the war-torn territory, people are disposing of rubbish into the streets.

People are forced to live among the piles of rubbish which attract vermin and insects.

It's just another difficulty that Palestinians face as they return home following the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.

Children were seen foraging amongst the litter searching for food or anything of use to their families.

"It spreads disease among people and itching and coughing among children,” said one resident, Abu Saad Saleh. “People burn it and the smoke enters our homes. It has destroyed us."

He begged for the garbage to be removed.

Much of Gaza City and the surrounding areas of north Gaza were decimated by repeated Israeli offensives against Hamas militants during 15 months of war.

While some 1 million Palestinians fled from the north to escape Israel’s bombardment and ground assaults, tens of thousands remained throughout the war.

But municipal services like garbage collection collapsed early on in the fighting, leaving nowhere to dispose of waste except the streets.

With the start of a ceasefire earlier this month, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled further south have returned to Gaza City.

But they face a host of problems: Many have nowhere to live after homes were destroyed, water is in short supply, electricity near non-existent.

The garbage further adds to their woes with the smell, the flies and the pollution as some people burn it.

On Tuesday, Rabah al-Kord burned a pile of trash in a garbage-filled lot next to his building, sending up a column of black smoke. He said he had no choice.




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