Gaza faces a man-made drought as water systems collapse, UNICEF says

June 20, 2025 , 06:20 PM

By Olivia Le Poidevin

(June 20, 2025, REUTERS) – Gaza is facing a man-made drought as its water systems collapse, the United Nations’ children agency said on Friday.

“Children will begin to die of thirst … Just 40% of drinking water production facilities remain functional,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told reporters in Geneva.

“We are way below emergency standards in terms of drinking water for people in Gaza,” he added.

UNICEF also reported a 50% increase in children aged six months to 5 years admitted for treatment of malnutrition from April to May in Gaza, and half a million people going hungry.

It said the U.S.-backed aid distribution system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was “making a desperate situation worse.”

On Friday at least 25 people awaiting aid trucks or seeking aid were killed by Israeli fire south of Netzarim in central Gaza Strip, according to local health authorities. On Thursday at least 51 people were killed by Israeli gunfire and military strikes, including 12 people who tried to approach a site operated by the GHF in the central Gaza Strip.

Elder, who was recently in Gaza, said he had many testimonials of women and children injured while trying to receive food aid, including a young boy who was wounded by a tank shell and later died of his injuries.

He said a lack of public clarity on when the sites, some of which are in combat zones, were open was causing mass casualty events.

“There have been instances where information (was) shared that a site is open, but then it’s communicated on social media that they’re closed, but that information was shared when Gaza’s internet was down and people had no access to it,” he said.

On Wednesday, the GHF said in a statement it had distributed three million meals across three of its aid sites without an incident.

On Friday at least 12 people were killed in an airstrike on a house belonging to the Ayyash family in Deir Al-Balah, taking the day’s death toll to 37.

(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin, Editing by Friederike Heine and Miranda Murray)

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