Fire in Gaza
Fire in GazaIsrael news photo: file

A seven-kilometer-long noxious black cloud is hovering over central Gaza for the seventh straight day, because a missile aimed at Israel hit a waste disposal site in Wadi As-Salqa, inside Gaza, starting a fire.

The mayor of Wadi As-Salqa, Abdul-Mahdi Abu Mugheseeb, said that the fire started near the border with Israel, and that smoke spread to Deir Al-Balah, six kilometers away. Sources in Gaza told Bethlehem-based Maan news agency that the cause of the fire was “a homemade projectile seemingly fired towards Israeli towns.” This did not prevent Arab officials from blaming Israel for the fire, however.

Abu Mugheseeb said that bulldozers from Gaza attempted to extinguish the fire by pouring truckloads of sand on it. However, he claimed, Israeli forces stationed at the border prevented access to the landfill site from the east, forcing fire fighters to attempt to access the fire from the west.

In order to do this, they needed to coordinate the activity with the International Red Cross, but this too was a problem, another official said. Muhammad Majdalawi, head of the Gaza solid waste council, claimed that “On the first day when fire erupted, we were about to complete the job before the Israelis forced us to withdraw our staff and vehicles half an hour before we finished.”