Gaza Crisis: Displaced Residents in Rafah Describe Severe Overcrowding and Sky-High Food Prices

2023-12-31 14:00:00

Displaced Gazans in Rafah tell CNN regarding sky-high food prices and severe overcrowding

Displaced Palestinians inside Gaza have described overcrowding, sky-high food prices, hungry children and poor sanitary conditions.

CNN spoke by phone to several people trying to survive in Rafah in the south, where tens of thousands have fled despite it already being the most densely populated part of Gaza.

“The way I manage is by begging here and there and getting help from anyone,” said Abu Misbah, a 51-year-old construction worker trying to support a family of 10.

Vegetables and fruits are unaffordable, he said. His children asked for oranges, but he mightn’t buy them.

“We had never been through this situation before. We were a middle-class family,” he said. “Now, since the war, we buy dates, which before we found free everywhere. We want a solution to our miserable suffering.”

Umm Omar, 50, is also displaced in Rafah and lives in a tent. During the truce, her family briefly returned home only to find all the windows and solar panels broken, and the kitchen destroyed.

“We are nine people in a two-meter by one-meter tent,” he said. “We bought this tent ourselves; no one helped us or provided it to us.”

Omar said the group makes do with canned food and estimated that most food was at least four times more expensive than before the war. It is also difficult to find medicines.

“Life is difficult and humiliating; the word humiliating doesn’t even come close to describing it,” he told CNN.

In recent days, large groups of civilians desperate for food have been seen surrounding aid trucks arriving in Gaza in a desperate fight for help.

The United Nations has warned that the humanitarian situation in southern Gaza is deteriorating. He warned that the volume of aid coming into the enclave “remains woefully inadequate.”
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