Gaza Strip's periods of extreme heat compound Palestinians' suffering

In Gaza, the sky is full of menace. As well as the missiles that rain down on schools and shelters, the brutal rays of the sun have made the summer unbearable for those struggling to survive in a ravaged landscape of ruins and rubble.

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Ms Samaher al-Daour sometimes wishes she had been killed in the early days of the Israel-Hamas war rather than have to watch her son, who lost a leg during the conflict, endure the unbearable heat.

"The situation is horrible," said Ms Daour, 42, as she sat beside her 20-year-old son Haitham in their sweltering tent in the southern city of Khan Younis in June.

"During the day, it is incredibly hot inside and outside the tent," she said in a telephone interview.

"We go to the sea but it is still very difficult." Her son lost his leg in February during an Israeli air strike on a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Now the stifling heat is denying him the rest he needs to recover his strength.

He sweats all the time and this is irritating his leg and making it swell.

"He is suffering because of this," said Ms Daour.

After 10 months of war, almost all of Gaza's 2.3 million people are displaced. They live in tents or over crowded shelters, with almost no electricity and little clean water.

Hungry and weak, they cannot shower, and struggle to sleep in their boiling shelters. In the heat, food is rotting, drawing insects and flies to crowded camps where people, who have been forced to flee again and again, now risk heatstroke and other heat-related diseases.