Anger And Despair As Palestinians Queue For Supplies During Race

A middle-aged woman rails at the world in a queue for cooking gas in Deir al-Balah, a town in the centre of the Gaza Strip.

She shouts angrily in the air, desperation and frustration visible in her face, despair lurking in the background.

"We've been waiting in line to fill one gas cylinder since early morning. I performed my morning prayers while standing."

She tells me that she had to flee her home in Beit Hanoun in the north, just 2km (1.2 miles) from the border with Israel.

"I can't describe the destruction. Entire families have been erased from civil records. They were killed under their houses.

"Gaza has been completely destroyed. Have mercy on us."

She is now living with her family at a UN-run school in Deir al-Balah.

After Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 240 hostage, Israel started air strikes and then launched a ground invasion.

At least 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war so far, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The Gaza Strip is home to 2.3 million people and the UN says 80% have been displaced by the conflict, with Israel ordering everyone living in the north to evacuate south of the Wadi Gaza river.

On Friday, a four-day pause in the fighting began under a deal between Israel and Hamas, which saw 50 of the hostages held in Gaza freed in return for the release of 150 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

The two sides later extended the truce for two days from Tuesday to allow an additional 20 hostages and 60 prisoners to be released.

The agreement also allowed more aid to be sent to Gaza.

Up to 200 aid lorries have been crossing from Egypt each day. But that is still less than half of the number of lorries that entered daily before the war.

UN agencies have said they have been able to deliver some of that aid to the north, which has been the focus of the Israeli ground offensive, but there are huge shortages everywhere.

There are hundreds in the queue for cooking gas in Deir al-Balah, about 6km south of Wadi Gaza. Young men sit on gas cylinders as they wait. The air is tense. People are exhausted.

"You can't find a cup of tea or one pack of biscuits. Yesterday, people were sharing bread while sleeping on the street," says another man in the queue.

"The rain that we witnessed yesterday and the cold we went through. People spent the night here. May God help us."

Map showing extent of Israel's ground offensive in Gaza (26 November 2023)

Israel cut off electricity and most water, and stopped deliveries of food, fuel and other goods to Gaza in retaliation for Hamas's attack.

Limited aid deliveries resumed on 21 October, but Israel halted all fuel shipments until 15 November and then allowed in only a limited amount. A US official says 140,000 litres of fuel is currently being delivered every two days.

The Israeli government says the fuel could be used by Hamas, which is a proscribed terrorist organisation in Israel, the EU, UK and US.

Mohammed al-Qidrah is waiting patiently in the cooking gas queue.

"We've been here for three days. We came here two nights ago and from 03:00 until now, we haven't been able to fill up," he says.

"We can't find fuel, flour or anything. You need to stand in line for everything and you struggle to find it."

The World Health Organization is warning that more people will die from disease than in bombings in Gaza if the health infrastructure is not restored.

Meanwhile, a UN-led aid consortium says 60% of the buildings in the territory are damaged or destroyed.

As the truce holds, there are signs some life is returning to Gaza, with people trying to harvest the remainder of this year's olive crop.

"We have to take advantage of this opportunity, there's no time," farmer Fathy Abu Salah told the Reuters news agency at his olive grove near the southern city of Khan Younis.

"This war destroyed us, there's hardly any production. The majority of the harvest was wasted."

A lack of electricity has also left the local olive press reliant on fuel to power its machinery.

"Finding fuel is a crisis that everyone is facing," says olive farmer and press worker Mohamed Wafy.

"As soon as we secured access to fuel, we were able to open the olive press, even if it's working at minimum capacity."

-bbc