Two security sources report that senior Hezbollah field commander was killed in Israeli attack

DEIR EL-BALAH, Palestinian Territories: Wafaa Elwan’s five-year-old son cannot sleep in the tent city in Gaza where she and her seven children are housed, but it is not the weapons of war that are causing his daily nightmare.
“My son can’t sleep through the night because he can’t stop scratching his body,” said the worried mother.
The boy has white and red patches on his feet and legs, and even more under his T-shirt. He is one of many Gaza residents suffering from skin infections ranging from scabies to chickenpox, lice, impetigo and other debilitating rashes.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 150,000 people have contracted skin diseases in the squalid conditions in which displaced Gaza residents have lived since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas on October 7.
“We sleep on the ground, on sand, from which worms emerge beneath us,” says Elwan. Her family is one of thousands who live on a sandy patch by the sea near the central Gaza city of Deir Al-Balah.
Elwan believes infections are inevitable. “We can no longer bathe our children like we used to. There are no hygiene and sanitary products to wash and clean ourselves. There is nothing.”
Parents used to tell their children to wash themselves in the Mediterranean Sea. But pollution from war has increased and destroyed basic services. The risk of disease has become even greater.
“The sea is just sewage. They even throw garbage and baby diapers into the sea,” she said.
The WHO has reported 96,417 cases of scabies and lice, 9,274 cases of chickenpox, 60,130 cases of rashes and 10,038 cases of impetigo since the start of the Gaza war.
According to Sami Hamid, a pharmacist who runs a makeshift clinic in the Deir Al-Balah camp, scabies and chickenpox are particularly widespread in the Palestinian coastal areas.
Two boys in the clinic had dozens of the typical chickenpox blisters and crusts on their hands, feet, back and stomach.
Lacking medication, 43-year-old Hamid, who was himself homeless, rubbed the boys’ skin with calamine lotion to relieve the itching.
Children’s skin suffers from “the hot weather and the lack of clean water,” he said.
Mohammed Abu Mughaiseeb, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) medical coordinator in the Gaza Strip, said children were at risk because “they are children – they play outside, they touch everything, eat everything without washing it.”
Abu Mughaiseeb said that hot weather leads to increased sweating and accumulation of dirt, which can cause rashes and allergies, which in turn lead to infections when scratched.
“People no longer live in their homes, there is no adequate hygiene,” he said.
MSF doctors fear the emergence of other skin diseases such as leishmaniasis, which can be fatal in its worst form.
Children in the Gaza Strip are already very vulnerable to disease, he said, because their immune systems are weakened by malnutrition.
Pharmacist Hamid said his team recently visited a makeshift school where 24 of 150 students were suffering from scabies.
“Some of them have developed skin infections and unfortunately these infections are spreading among them,” said Ola Al-Qula, a teacher at a makeshift tent school.
The WHO warned that other diseases are also rampant in the refugee camps, which are due to the lack of hygiene.
“The toilets here are primitive and flow into canals between the tents, which ultimately contributes to the spread of epidemics,” said Hamid.
According to the WHO, 485,000 cases of diarrhea have been reported.
As the United Nations announced on Tuesday, 1.9 million people are currently displaced in the Gaza Strip, although around 2.4 million people live there.
The war began with Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP news agency count based on Israeli figures.
According to the Health Ministry, at least 37,925 people, again mostly civilians, were killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Hamas-controlled Gaza.