No food, no water, no hope: Starving Palestinians shelter in UN schools

Throughout the Gaza Strip, classrooms are packed with distressed Palestinians.

Schools run by Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, have become shelters for Palestinian families displaced by relentless Israeli bombing and an order to flee Gaza's north.

In an Unrwa school in al-Maghazi, a refugee camp in central Gaza for Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Nakba, the situation is dire.

Around 5,870 people, about 1,100 families, are taking shelter here. Of these, people running the shelter say, just over half are male.

Umm Yousef came here from al-Shati camp, which is by the sea.

"Now it has become more dangerous, and living there meant living in constant fear. Rockets fell around us day and night, and the sky was filled with the ominous hum of aircraft. We were warned to flee, so I took my children and left for al-Maghazi," she told Middle East Eye.

"The scene resembled a mass migration: trucks filled with families, mattresses, and the sounds of children," she said.

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