While dealing with a heatwave, people in Gaza struggle to secure enough water for drinking and sanitation and experts warn that far less than the minimum needed to sustain life is reaching the territory.

Water runs through nearly every part of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.

Contaminated supplies spread disease, shortages leave people dehydrated, and fuel restrictions cut power to desalination and sewage treatment plants.

As the territory faces what experts warn is a “worst-case scenario of famine,” people are also scrambling to access water for drinking and washing.

Sweat-soaked and dust-covered, they cross rubble to fill reused bottles, buckets, or even small plastic bags, hauling them back to Muwasi, the sprawling tent camp where thousands are sheltering.

The United Nations estimates that people in Gaza survive on less than three liters a day — a fraction of the minimum humanitarian agencies say is needed.

Rising summer heat has only worsened the strain, according Rana Odeh, a mother from Khan Younis.

Even when water is available, it is often murky and unsafe.

“We are forced to give it to our children because we have no alternative. It causes diseases for us and our children. It is contaminated water. Sometimes we get water, sometimes not. We suffer greatly from its shortage,” she said.

Before the war, Gaza’s roughly two million residents got their supply from a patchwork of sources.

Some was piped in by Israel’s national water company. Some came from aid-funded treatment plants. Some was pulled from high-saline wells, and some was imported in bottles.

But bombardment, destroyed infrastructure, lack of fuel or electricity for the desalination plants and pumps, restriction of movement and no access to bottled water, make accessing water difficult.

Children wheel containers filled with water on carts and jostle around a hose to fill jerry cans and plastic bags with precious supply.

They take the water mainly from trucks that receive it from the desalination plants and distribute it among the hundreds of thousands living in tents, but it's not enough for everyone.

Those who manage to get electricity with their solar panels for some hours per day, put the water in plastic bags and in a refrigerator to sell it in the street to those struggling with the heat.

“Outside the tents it is hot and inside the tents it is hot, so we are forced to drink this water wherever we go,” said Mahmoud al-Dibs, displaced from Gaza City.