A UN camp with no water for days, makeshift shelters in schools, and hospitals that are already overwhelmed... These are the conditions that residents from the northern part of the Gaza Strip find when they arrive in the south after fleeing the Israeli bombardment. The FRANCE 24 Observers team has been following two families who fled the north to seek refuge in the south. They've set up camp at schools and hospitals, where supplies are severely lacking.
Madhat Hajjaj managed to set up a kind of shelter for his four children in the courtyard of a school called Deir al-Balah. Adam Zyara and his family carved out some space in a corridor of the Al-Amal Hospital, in southern Gaza's Khan Younis.
Zyara told us more about the conditions in southern Gaza.
Here in Khan Yunis, all the houses are completely full. So the new arrivals have no choice but to seek refuge in hospitals or schools, which are already suffering from food and water shortages.
We live in total darkness at night and a nightmare during the day.
Here, there is no gas, no fuel, no engines. We cook our meals over a wood fire, using leaves.
We get water from street vendors on carts. The water is a mix of drinking water and waste water. Or, for those who can afford it, bottled water sells for three or four times the original price.
Here life becomes a little more difficult by the day, by the hour. Every hour, another essential good disappears from the market. Every hour, the fuel level drops. And every hour that passes brings us closer to the electric generators running out.
Many of the displaced families lack clothing, and are afraid of the cooler winter weather to come. An estimated 1.5 million Gazans have left their homes since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
