Children walk between emergency shelters for displaced Palestinians in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on April 18, 2026.image: BASHAR TALEB / AFP
Rats, fleas and other parasites are spreading rapidly in the completely overcrowded camps in the Gaza Strip – and are exacerbating the already dramatic health situation.
April 25, 2026, 6:48 p.mApril 25, 2026, 7:10 p.m
team afp, Khan Younès, Territory of Palestine
In the densely packed camps for displaced people in Gaza, where thousands of people endure without sufficient water and sanitation, rats, fleas and other parasites are spreading unhindered. This exacerbates the misery of a population that is already completely exhausted after more than two years of war.
Transparency note: This article is based on a report from the AFP news agency, which was taken over by our colleagues at Watson Actu. watson translated the text for German-speaking Switzerland. According to AFP, the conversations cited were held in Khan Younès in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians forced to live in makeshift shelters report a veritable plague of vermin. Aid organizations warn: As temperatures rise, this is increasingly becoming a serious threat to public health. Mohammed al-Raqab, a displaced person living in a tent near Khan Younes in southern Gaza, said:
«I suffered a lot from weasels and mice. My children were bitten. One of my sons even had his nose bitten.”
The 32-year-old construction worker, who originally comes from Bani Suheila, continues:
“I can’t sleep at night because I have to constantly watch over my children.”
In the makeshift camps right by the sea, rodents have an easy time of it: they dig tunnels in the sand, under the tent walls, and thus get into improvised kitchens and makeshift storage areas.
Conditions favor scabies infestation
Almost the entire population of Gaza has been displaced by Israeli evacuation orders and airstrikes as part of the war against Hamas, sparked by the Palestinian Islamist group’s unprecedented attack on Israel in October 2023.
According to the United Nations, around 1.7 million people out of Gaza’s total population of over 2 million continue to live in camps. They cannot return to their homes or are in areas under Israeli military control. This is despite the fragile ceasefire that came into force in October 2025.
In these facilities, “living conditions are characterized by vermin and parasite infestation,” said the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs after several on-site visits in March.
A Palestinian girl holds up an umbrella to protect herself from the rain at a makeshift camp in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip.image: Imago
At Al-Aqsa Hospital in the center of the Gaza Strip, Hani al-Flait, head of the pediatric department, says his team sees cases of skin infections, including scabies, every day.
These cases are all the more serious “because these children and their families live in miserable conditions, without basic sanitation and without access to clean drinking water,” he says, adding:
“In addition, there is a lack of suitable treatment methods.”
An alarming health situation
Sabreen Abou Taybeh, whose son suffers from an infection reminiscent of chickenpox, says desperately:
“We live in tents and in schools that are flooded with sewage.”
As she shows the red spots that cover the little boy’s chest and back, she continues:
“I took him to doctors and the hospital, but they can’t do anything. The rash remains.”
Ghalia Abou Selmi says she has to fight mice every day. They ruined the jewelry she had prepared for her daughter’s wedding – “a real disaster.”
As for the fleas, “they cause skin allergies, not only in children, but also in adults,” says the 53-year-old as she sorts through holey clothing in the tent that now serves as her home.
Her family, she says, has been displaced 20 times since October 2023 and has not yet returned to their home, in the town of Abasan al-Kabira, near the border with Israel.
A refugee camp in Khan Yunis.image: Imago
Numerous bottlenecks
Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to control all entrances to Gaza with strict controls and frequent rejections of aid deliveries, according to NGOs and the United Nations. The result: There is a lack of everything – from medicine to fuel to clothing and, above all, food.
Airstrikes and exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and what it describes as Hamas militants continue to take place almost daily.
At least 777 people have been killed by the Israeli army since the ceasefire began, according to the health ministry in the area under Hamas control.
Israel, for its part, reported five soldiers killed in the Gaza Strip during the same period.
Despite the ceasefire, Israeli airstrikes continue to cause deaths.image: EYAD BABA / AFP