On Thursday, December 19, the UN warned it was running out of funds to house families in Gaza, after having doubled its estimate of the number of homes damaged or destroyed in this summer’s war with Israel. “Unless the situation changes urgently, we will run out of funds in January, meaning we will not be able to provide rental subsidies to many affected families nor provide the support required to carry out repairs,” said Robert Turner, the operations director for the UNRWA Palestinian refugee agency.

Hussein Wael al Najjar, 14, in front of the shelter he currently lives in with his family in the village of Khuza’a, November 16, 2014. The family’s home was destroyed during the Israeli attacks on their village in the Gaza Strip. Hussein’s family includes eight children. (Photo: Activestills)

According to a report filed by the Palestinian news agency, Ma’an, Turner said more than 96,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in the 50-day war, more than twice the UN’s original estimate. Based on satellite imagery and preliminary field work immediately after the war, “we estimated about 42,000 refugee family shelters had been affected by the war,” he said. “We now know that over 96,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.”

Turner said more than 7,000 homes were completely lost, affecting some 10,000 families. An additional 89,000 homes were damaged, about 10,000 of them severely. The Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, which ended on August 26, killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, most of them civilians. On the Israeli side, there were 73 fatalities, most of them soldiers.