Flour sacks turned flood barriers: Gaza faces another winter without safe shelter

Like many people in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, Ahmed Al-Omari is preparing for another winter of bitter cold and rain that threatens to cause flooding as families struggle to survive in tattered tents and damaged buildings.He is racing against time, working with other young men to fill sacks that once held World Food Programme (WFP) flour with sand to protect their makeshift shelters from the rain.“These are flour sacks that we used to retrieve from the jaws of death, so that we could eat,” he told UN News, referring to the dangers of aid distribution in the Gaza Strip, where civilians have been killed while trying to obtain assistance.“Now, they have become sacks that we fill with sand to act as barriers against rainwater,” he explained. “We flood every year and we have put these sacks in place in the hope that, somehow, rainwater will not get inside.”Two million need better shelterAround two million people in Gaza still need shelter assistance, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Rain has already begun and an intensifying El Niño threatens more in the coming months.Right now, agencies were working to get as much shelter material into the Strip as pos...