Closing summary
In Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, the municipality issued an urgent statement saying it was no longer able to provide 700,000 people in the area with drinking water after running out of fuel.
Unrwa’s head, Philippe Lazzarini, said in a post on X on Monday that the agency’s headquarters in Gaza was “flattened” after being “turned into a battlefield” during heavy fighting. “Another episode in the blatant disregard of international humanitarian law,” he wrote.
In the southern Gaza city of Rafah, the main focus of Israel’s offensive since May, residents reported renewed fighting on Monday. The military also reportedly intensified aerial and tank shelling in central Gaza in the al-Bureij and al-Maghazi historic refugee camps.
At least 38,664 Palestinian people have been killed and 89,097 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement. An estimated 80 Palestinians were killed and 216 injured in the past 24 hours alone, the ministry said.
David Lammy called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza during his first visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories as the UK’s foreign secretary.
Gaza’s health ministry updated the death toll from an Israeli airstrike on a school in central Gaza on Sunday, saying it had increased from 15 to 22. The Abu Araban school was run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, and housed “thousands of displaced people”, civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Deir Al-Balah municipality says it can no longer provide 700,000 people in area with drinking water
In Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, where Israel hasn’t yet invaded and hundreds of thousands of people have taken refuge, the municipality issued an urgent statement saying it was no longer able to provide 700,000 people in the area with drinking water after running out of fuel.
The statement said:
We urge citizens to preserve what is left in their private tankers and we stress the need to maintain the spirit of cooperation and sharing.
Aid agencies have warned that the lack of clean water and flows of untreated sewage pose a serious threat to health for Palestinians in Gaza.
When Israel cut off fuel to Gaza after 7 October, the resulting power cuts meant wastewater could not be pumped to treatment plants, leading to 100,000 cubic metres of sewage a day spewing into the sea, according to the UN Environment Programme.
A BBC Verify investigation found in May that hundreds of water and sanitation facilities in the devastated enclave had been damaged or destroyed since October.
Updated
