The war in the Gaza Strip has disrupted the lives of millions of Palestinians and caused catastrophic damage to the natural environment on which they depend for water, clean air and food, a UN agency said today.

Restoration of environmental services will take decades and cannot even begin until a ceasefire is in place, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (Unrwa) said in X.

Hours earlier, on the same social network, Unrwa warned that the conflict there «took an unbearable toll on children».

Their lives were completely uprooted, while families face constant fear and forced displacement amid terrible conditions, it warned.

With no access to education and repeated trauma, the only hope is an end to the war, he said.

Unrwa denounced that in the last month more than a million Palestinians, most of them refugees, fled the southern Egyptian border town of Rafah following the start of an army ground offensive.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government justified the operation on the grounds of destroying the last bastion of Hamas, which allegedly had four battalions deployed there.

However, the United Nations, non-governmental organisations and numerous countries criticised the attack on the overpopulated area and warned of serious humanitarian consequences.

Yesterday the armed forces launched a new ground operation against refugee camps in the centre of the Strip, in particular the Bureij camp, where numerous deaths and injuries are reported.