GAZA STRIP: Safaa Yassin dressed her child in the same white bodysuit for months, an all-too-familiar story from the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by 10 months of war. “When I was pregnant, I dreamed of dressing my daughter in beautiful clothes. Today I have nothing to wear,” says Yassin, one of the thousands of Palestinians displaced from Gaza City. “I never thought that one day I wouldn’t be able to dress my children,” says the 38-year-old, who now lives in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area designated by Israeli forces as a humanitarian zone. “But the few clothes I found before evacuating south were either the wrong size or not suitable for the season,” she adds, as Gaza bakes in summer temperatures exceeding 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) every day. Finding clothes – any clothes – is increasingly difficult for the 2.4 million people living in the territory under Israeli siege. Gaza once had a thriving textile industry, but since the war began on October 7 with an unprecedented attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, it has received only a trickle of goods. Faten Juda is also struggling to dress her 15-month-old son, Adam, who is stuffed into ill-fitting pajamas with his bare arms and legs sticking out of the tight fabric. “He’s growing every day and his clothes don’t fit him anymore, but I can’t find any other ones,” the 30-year-old told AFP.
Besieged Gazans share shoes, wear same clothes for months
