With a lack of access to aid, this mother in Gaza bathes her child with sand

In her tent in Khan Younis, Samar Surai places a bucket of water and a small dish on the ground. Six-year-old Noor stands in the centre of the tent as her mother gently unties her hair and prepares her for a bath. 

Crouching on the ground, Surai gathers some sand and adds water to it to make a paste. Noor watches her mother as she stirs the mixture with her fingers to get the right consistency. 

The mother of four has been bathing her children this way for months, as Palestinians still face trouble accessing aid, including shampoo and soaps.

"They have the right to have a bath, they have the right to use soap," Surai told CBC freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife from her tent. "They have the right to use shampoo." 

As the Israel-Hamas war stretches into its 10th month, parents in Gaza like Surai are struggling to meet their kids' basic hygiene needs.

Surai and her four children were displaced from Khan Younis to Rafah, where they had stayed for the last four months. But since the Israeli military took over the town bordering Egypt, Surai has had to move back to Khan Younis.

Her home was bombed in the fighting, so she and her family are taking refuge in a tent in the internally displaced people's camps in the central part of the Gaza Strip. 

The war has been ongoing since Oct. 7, when Hamas led a devastating assault in southern Israel, killing about 1,200 and taking around 250 hostage into Gaza, according to Israeli figures. Israel's subsequent offensive in Gaza has killed over 38,000, according to Palestinian officials, and devastated the territory.

Though aid has been arriving, much of it has piled up at the Israel-Gaza border. Aid organizations have cited the ongoing Israeli military operation, severe fuel shortages and armed looting by some Palestinians as some reasons for the backlog. United Nations officials have accused Israel of blocking access to aid, saying the territory faces widespread famine. 

Meanwhile, Israel has denied such claims. It has instead blamed the UN for failing to adequately distribute the shipments, and Hamas for manipulating their flow. 

During a UN Security Council briefing on July 2, Sigrid Kaag, UN senior humanitarian and reconstruction co-ordinator for Gaza, stressed the importance of pushing for unimpeded delivery of aid to the strip.

On a main road near Surai's tent in Khan Younis, Muhammad Barbakh runs a cosmetics shop. It's standing with the help of cinder blocks, wood beams and tarps. Demand for soap and shampoo is high, he says, and he's having difficulty meeting it. 

"Even the Gaza-made [soaps] are not available," he says. "The people are desperate." 

Some families have had to resort to other ways of bathing, like heading to the coast and cleaning themselves in the ocean. But moving around the strip remains dangerous as the war continues.