The al-Manasra family rarely gets enough water to both drink and wash after their daily journey to a distribution point in Gaza, like the one where eight people were killed on Sunday in an attack that the Israeli military said missed its target.
Living in a tent camp near the ruins of a collapsed concrete building in Gaza City, the family says their children are already suffering from diarrhea and skin diseases, as well as a lack of clean water, and they fear it will get worse.
"There is no water, our children are infected with scabies, there are no hospitals to go to and no medicine," said Akram Manasra, 51.
He had set off on Monday for a local water tap with three of his daughters, each carrying two heavy plastic containers in the scorching Gaza summer heat, but they managed to fill only two – barely enough for the family of 10. The lack of clean water in Gaza after 21 months of war and four months of Israeli blockade is already having “devastating impacts on public health,” the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in a report this month.
For people waiting in line at a water distribution point on Sunday, it was fatal. A rocket that Israel said was aimed at militants but failed to fire hit a line of people waiting to get water in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
The Israeli fuel blockade, coupled with difficulty accessing wells and desalination plants in areas controlled by the Israeli military, is severely limiting water, sanitation and hygiene services, according to OCHA.
Fuel shortages have also hit waste and sewage services, risking further contamination of the small and overcrowded territory's dwindling water supply, and diseases causing diarrhea and jaundice are spreading among people crammed into shelters and weakened by hunger.
"If electricity were allowed to run on desalination plants, the deadly water shortage problem that is becoming the current situation in Gaza would be reversed within 24 hours," said James Elder, spokesman for the UN children's agency, UNICEF.
“What possible reason could there be to deny a legitimate amount of water that a family needs?” he added.
COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last week, an Israeli military official said that Israel was allowing sufficient fuel to be supplied to Gaza, but its distribution across the enclave was not under Israel's jurisdiction.
For the Manasra family, like others in Gaza, the daily struggle to find water is tiring and often fruitless.
Inside their tent, the family tries to maintain hygiene by mopping. But there is no water for proper cleaning and sometimes they are unable to wash the dishes from their meager meals for days at a time.
Manasra sat in the tent and told how one of his young daughters had red, irritated marks on her back from what he said a doctor had told them was a skin infection caused by a lack of clean water.
They maintain a strict water use regime according to priority.
After pouring their two containers of water from the distribution point into a broken plastic water container near their tent, they use it to clean themselves from the tap, using their hands to splash it with spoons over their heads and bodies.
The water that flows into the basin below is then used for the dishes and then – now gray and dirty – for the clothes.
"How will this be enough for 10 people? For showering, washing clothes, washing dishes and washing the sheets. It's been three months since we washed the sheets and the weather is hot," said Manasra.
His wife, Umm Khaled, sat washing clothes in a small pool of water at the bottom of a bucket – all that was left after the more urgent demands of drinking and cooking.
"My daughter was very sick with heat rash and scabies. I went to several doctors for it and they prescribed me a lot of medicine. Two of my children yesterday, one had diarrhea and vomiting and the other had fever and infections from dirty water," she said.
