Gaza may already be 'unlivable' Says UN official

The Gaza Strip may already be "unlivable", a United Nations official warned yesterday, after a decade of Hamas rule and a crippling Israeli blockade.

Robert Piper, the UN's top humanitarian official in the Palestinian territories, told AFP in an interview to mark a new report on living conditions in Gaza all the "indicators are going in the wrong direction".

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"We predicted some years ago that Gaza would fast become unlivable on a host of indicators and that deadline is actually approaching even faster than we predicted -- from health access, to energy to water," he said.

A 2012 UN report predicted the Palestinian enclave would be "unlivable" by 2020 if nothing was done to ease the blockade.