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Excerpt from timesofindia.indiatimes.com
DEIR AL-BALAH: The tent camps stretch more than 16 kilometers (10 miles) along Gaza’s coast, filling the beach and sprawling into empty lots, fields and streets. Families dig trenches to use as toilets. Fathers search for food and water. Children dig through garbage and wrecked buildings for wood or cardboard for their mothers to burn for cooking.
Over the past three weeks, Israel’s offensive in Rafah has sent nearly a million Palestinians fleeing the southern Gaza city.Most have already been displaced multiple times during Israel’s nearly 8-month-old war in Gaza, which is aimed at destroying Hamas but has devastated the territory and caused what the United Nations says is a near-famine.
The situation has been worsened by a plunge in the amount of food, fuel and other supplies reaching the UN and other aid groups to distribute to the population. Palestinians, who relied in part on humanitarian aid even before the war, have largely been on their own to find the basics for survival.