In neighbourhoods where taps have long run dry, the earth itself has been turned into a last resort. Across Gaza, the collapse of water and sanitation systems during a genocidal war has pushed families to dig their own lifelines. Hand-cut shafts and improvised pits now puncture streets and courtyards, born of necessity rather than choice. They promise relief but deliver danger, as communities gamble with unstable soil and toxic air in the absence of functioning infrastructure.

One such attempt ended in tragedy in the north of the city, close to a silent pumping station. A young man helping to carve a narrow well slipped into the depth below. The walls gave way. Those above waited in dread as soil was hauled out bucket by bucket, clinging to the hope of movement. When rescuers finally reached him, the scene was unbearable, an image that has come to symbolise how ordinary acts of survival have been turned lethal by the destruction of essential services.

These deaths are not isolated. Emergency responders describe a pattern: collapses in unreinforced shafts, suffocation in confined spaces, and exposure to gases that rob oxygen within seconds. With treatment plants flattened and hundreds of kilometres of pipes unusable, waste seeps into living areas and groundwater alike. The environmental toll compounds the human one, threatening outbreaks of disease in some of the most densely populated districts on earth. What should be a basic public utility has become a private hazard, shifting risk onto those least able to bear it.

Municipal officials warn that the turn to makeshift wells and pits is an act of desperation. Pumps lie broken, networks shredded, and repairs stalled for lack of materials and fuel. In this vacuum, individual solutions proliferate, each one a potential collapse, contamination point, or fatal descent. Without urgent restoration of water and sanitation capacity, the slow violence of deprivation will continue to claim lives long after the bombs fall silent, embedding the consequences of a genocidal war into the soil itself.