Gaza’s mayor Yahya Al-Sarraj has issued an urgent appeal “to all international institutions and free people in the world to provide sufficient and large quantities of fuel, and to provide the necessary support mechanisms to provide water, sanitation and hygiene services to serve all residents of the Gaza Strip”, Al Jazeera reports.

“Gaza… suffers from a great paralysis in services provided to citizens, the first basic service is the service of providing water, where the quantities of water are significantly reduced and its quality is not available, and the quantities available for drinking are very scarce or almost non-existent,” he said in a video address.

“The sanitation service is not available and large quantities of untreated water accumulate in roads, shelters and hospitals, and we cannot provide cleaning and waste collection, which accumulates large quantities of it and emits unpleasant odours, many of which have been burned and produce toxic gas that causes environmental disasters for citizens,” he said.

He explained that the municipality’s crews could not open the closed streets due to the continuous Israeli shelling, warning of an environmental disaster that may occur with the flooding of Sheikh Radwan’s pool if heavy rain falls on the Gaza Strip, in addition to the mixing of sewage with rainwater in it and its level rises to more than 6 metres.