Now, during the war in Gaza, more than 330,000 tons of rubbish have built up across the territory. Humanitarian agencies say, with catastrophic risks to people's health and the environment. As summer temperatures rise, some of the more than one million displaced people who fled Israel's militia offensive in the Southern city of Rafeh are now living close to rubbish tips. A Middle East correspondence, Yoland Nell, reports.

This is war-torn Gaza's new landscape. Mountains of rubbish. They've built up as basic services have collapsed. And for some, among the hundreds of thousands of people newly displaced by fighting in the south, like Asmahan Al-Masri, this wasteland is now home.

We've never lived next to rubbish. I cry just like any other grandmother would over her grandchildren being sick and having scabies.

Her family of 16 shares its tent in Khairn Younes with clouds of flies, sometimes snakes. Everyone tells us of the constant stench.

The smell is very disturbing. I keep my tent or open so that I can get some air, but there's no air, just the smell of rubbish.

With the latest influx of people from Raafah, the cities that they've fled to have been overwhelmed. Local councils lack equipment and fuel for rubbish trucks. Since the deadly seventh of October attacks, Israel won't let them go to the border area where Gaza's main landfill sites are.

This place wasn't originally meant for waste. It's a public space and farming area. The council was forced to dump waste here because our crews can't reach the official dumping grounds.

Now, as summer temperatures soar, there are new warnings from aid agencies about the health hazards posed by so much rubbish. But desperation drives children to take extra risks, searching for something to eat, use, or sell. And across Gaza, these stinking piles of waste are a symbol of just how unbearable conditions here have become. Yoland Nell, BBC News, Jerusalem.