The Water Authority announced that its technical teams continue, for the sixth consecutive day, the process of assessing the water damage in northern Gaza resulting from the Israeli aggression.

The Water Authority confirmed in a statement on Friday that its crews are facing difficulties in reaching water and sewage facilities due to the massive destruction of residential neighborhoods, infrastructure, and the streets leading to them, especially since we are in the winter season, while there is a major shortage of equipment, heavy machinery, and fuel for them to work on removing the rubble and opening humanitarian corridors to facilitate inspection and assessment operations.

She explained that her technical crews were able to reach the seawater desalination plant in northern Gaza and conduct an initial technical assessment of the extent of the damage it sustained. It was found that there were serious technical malfunctions in the electrical and electromechanical parts in all stages and operational units of the plant, in addition to the occupation completely bulldozing some of the basic components of the plant, which led to the destruction of five seawater feeding wells, the station’s inlet line, in addition to the destruction of two power generators, a pump and a return water line, as well as the destruction of the external walls and the outlet line pumps.

It is noteworthy that all the damages that were observed were mainly due to the occupation army using the station as a military gathering center for its forces with the aim of systematically destroying the water sector.

The Water Authority confirmed that this station is the only one in the northern Gaza Valley area and covers all the northern western neighborhoods of Gaza City with a production capacity of 10,000 cups/day, as there are no alternatives that cover the size of this need with the difficulty of drilling water wells due to the high salinity of the groundwater reservoir with seawater in the western areas of the city.

She stressed that the damage to the desalination plants exacerbates the difficulty of the water situation in the Gaza Strip because it is the only safe source for providing citizens with potable water.

It is noteworthy that the Water Authority was working before the aggression on an emergency expansion of the production capacity of the desalination plant to raise its production capacity to 12,500 cups/day in order to expand the scope of supply to the western neighborhoods of Jabalia and Beit Lahia, which suffer from the same problem in the groundwater reservoir.