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As Gaza Water Crisis Worsens, Israel Bombs Critical Facility in Possible War Crime
"This station was one of the most important remaining sources of clean water in Gaza City," said an activist who has used it to supply desperate families.
06 Jul, 2026
As Gaza is gripped by a water crisis, Israel has reportedly attacked a facility that provided safe drinking water to thousands of families in Gaza City.
Tamer Nahed, a journalist and activist with the recently created humanitarian group Sake For Gaza, reported via social media on Monday that his group had been forced to suspend its efforts to provide clean water to some of Gaza's most dangerous areas after the facility they partnered with was "directly struck, resulting in the deaths of several people and injuries to others working there."
Middle East Eye reported on Monday that the attack, east of Gaza City, "struck a gathering of displaced people in front of a water refilling station" and killed two people as Israel shelled the city early on Monday.
The Palestinian outlet Al-Quds said the attack "directly targeted civilians as they stood in front of a water filling station" in the Al-Samar area, and was "part of a series of attacks launched by the occupation forces against civilian gatherings and vital facilities in the besieged areas of the Gaza Strip, exacerbating the already deteriorating humanitarian crisis."
Under international law, deliberately attacking civilian facilities or those that are essential for survival, like water facilities, is considered a war crime.
Israel has destroyed or damaged nearly 90% of water and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which says the military has used water as a "weapon" in its genocidal war against Gaza.
The group has documented the military firing upon clearly marked trucks and destroying boreholes and desalination plants relied on by thousands of residents. The group has also documented attacks on civilians accessing clean water.
A late-May report from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) found that around 82% of families in Gaza remain water insecure, and up to 70% are unable to collect even six liters of water per person each day. A person needs between 50 and 100 liters of water per day to meet their most basic needs, according to the World Health Organization.
Monday's attack came less than an hour after Nahed announced that the group's 11th truck had "reached one of Gaza’s most dangerous areas, carrying 5,000 liters of fresh drinking water."
The group had been attempting to send one truck per day to families living in tent cities, many of whom have been forced to rely on groundwater and contaminated water in order to survive, leading to serious illness.
Nahed said he and his team "truly risked our lives to reach this place, as it is located very close to military deployment areas, and the road was extremely dangerous at every moment."
He called the attack on the water supply facility "very heartbreaking news" and said as a result, "we have been forced to suspend our water distribution project until further notice."
"This station was one of the most important remaining sources of clean water in Gaza City and served as a lifeline for thousands of families, especially after most other water stations had stopped operating," he said. "We are deeply saddened by the loss of life and by the suspension of a project that was providing clean drinking water to people enduring these extremely difficult conditions."
Monday's attacks were some of the latest of Israel's near-daily strikes despite October's ceasefire agreement. Israel has expanded its control over the Gaza Strip in recent months, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying last week that the military “will not withdraw from the territory" as the agreement requires.
He added on Sunday that unless Hamas fully disarms, there also would be "no reconstruction in Gaza without dismantling and demilitarizing the strip."
Netanyahu described the occupation zone as a "new Gaza envelope inside of Gaza," a term that could refer to permanent occupation or annexation, as the term "Gaza envelope" refers to the communities inside Israeli territory near the Gaza border.
Other ministers in Israel's far-right government, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have called for Israel to complete the "conquest" of Gaza and move Israeli settlers to replace the Palestinian population.
A recent proposal by the "Board of Peace," led by US President Donald Trump, conditioned the entry of basic humanitarian supplies, including shelter-building material, reconstruction aid, and other life essentials, on the total disarmament of Palestinian militant groups.
Last week, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that “the continued expansion of areas under Israeli control in Gaza since the ceasefire agreement in October 2025 is intensifying risks to civilians and further constraining humanitarian efforts."
“Humanitarian access remains severely constrained due to restrictions on movement, which results in delays or pauses in lifesaving activities,” the statement said. “Some partners have had to scale down or temporarily suspend lifesaving activities, particularly following the killing of service providers in those areas. This has affected up to thousands of families in the vicinity.”
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'War Crimes': Analysis Suggests US Bombed Water Facilities Used by 20,000 Iranians in Precision Strike
"Destroying a drinking water facility is not an attack on a target of war, but a mafia-style operation designed to harm the Iranian people," said one academic.
11 Jun, 2026
As temperatures in the village of Bemani, Iran, near the Strait of Hormuz, reached above 100°F this week, two water facilities were struck by bombs, cutting off the drinking water supply for 20,000 people in the area.
An analysis by The New York Times late Wednesday indicated that the attack on the drinking-water storage facilities appeared to be a precision strike by the US, raising questions about whether the Trump administration intentionally attacked civilian infrastructure, which would constitute a war crime under international law.
As the provincial water authority in the area reported that two storage tanks had been destroyed in an attack early Wednesday, US Central Command said on social media that the US Air Force and Navy had used "precision munitions" to strike "Iranian air defense, ground control stations, and surveillance radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz."
Esmaeil Baqaei, a spokesperson for the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, posted a video of damage to one of the facilities, whose light blue pipes were consistent with water infrastructure.
"As part of its aggression against Iran, the US military has deliberately struck vital civilian water infrastructure in Sirik, Hormozgan, destroying two reservoirs with a combined capacity of 2,500 cubic meters," said Baqaei. "These facilities supplied drinking water to more than 20,000 residents across ten villages. This is not collateral damage—it is a calculated war crime and a flagrant violation of human rights and international humanitarian law. The US must be held accountable for committing such systematic brutal attacks on civilian life-sustaining infrastructure."
The analysis of the strikes came as the US waged more attacks Wednesday night and early Thursday, including on an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman and against Iranian radars and air defenses.
In its analysis, the Times said commercial satellite imagery showed two water facilities in Bemani whose descriptions matched those given by Abdolhamid Hamzehpour, the chief executive of the province’s water authority, on Wednesday, when he reported the structures had been damaged by missiles.
Hamzehpour said in a statement that the high temperatures in the area were “unbearable” for residents without drinking water, and said that mobile water tanks had been deployed to nearby villages.
The roof of one of the facilities collapsed, according to videos released by Iranian state media, and the center of the roof of the other structure appeared to have been struck by a bomb.
The Times noted that both buildings were remotely located, with no other infrastructure located in the immediate vicinity, suggesting a likely precision strike.
Tasnim, a semiofficial news agency in Iran, released photos of bomb fragments that it said were recovered from the site. Researchers with the Open Source Munitions Portal identified the fragments as parts of a GBU-39 bomb, which is used by the US Air Force.
The precision-guided bomb was "consistent with the damage shown in the footage of the damaged building: a clean hole punched through the building’s roof and limited blast damage around it," reported the Times.
Alleged U.S. airstrikes overnight hit two water storage reservoirs in Iran's Sirik County, Hormozgan Province, reportedly leaving many without water.Images of remnants posted by Iranian media show the remains of a U.S.-made GBU-39 air-delivered bomb.osmp.ngo/osmp2336/
[image or embed]
— Open Source Munitions Portal (@munitionsportal.bsky.social) June 10, 2026 at 3:30 PM
The bombing came as President Donald Trump complained that Tehran was taking too long to finalize a peace deal. The US and Iran have each carried out attacks this week, raising doubts about a ceasefire deal that was reached in April following Trump's threats to wipe out Iran's civilization.
"Trump is so angry that Iran will not give him a deal that he is telling the US military to commit war crimes," said Phillips P. O'Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews. "Destroying a drinking water facility is not an attack on a target of war, but a mafia-style operation designed to harm the Iranian people."
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Ocasio-Cortez Corners EPA Administrator on Water Quality Near Data Centers
Ocasio-Cortez recently met with families in Morgan County, Georgia who said a nearby Meta data center had degraded their local wells and "now rely on bottled water to drink and prepare meals."
21 May, 2026
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday confronted a Trump Environmental Protection Agency official about the impact of artificial intelligence data centers on Americans' drinking water.
During a hearing held by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) grilled EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Jessica Kramer about whether the Trump administration had looked into complaints from communities across the US about nearby data centers causing a decline in water quality.
Kramer indicated that she was aware of the complaints being made about data centers' water usage, but said she hadn't heard anything about their negative impact on water quality.
At this point, the New York Democrat discussed a recent trip she made to Morgan County, Georgia, where local residents said that their tap water had turned brown since tech giant Meta began building a massive data center campus nearby.
"They are clear-cutting forests and began heavy construction, including blasting," Ocasio-Cortez said. "And families in the area are starting to see not only their water pressure decrease... but their appliances have all stopped working because it is decimating their water quality. They now rely on bottled water to drink and prepare meals, and nearby residents' water bills are expected to increase by 33%."
Ocasio-Cortez then pulled out a jar of brown water that she had taken from a local tap in Morgan County to demonstrate the severe decline in quality.
"The only difference between clear water and this was that data center," she said. "This wasn't just one well. This wasn't just one family's situation. This is what the drinking water now looks like next to that data center."
EXCLUSIVE: @AOC calls for a congressional investigation into the impact of data centers.
We took her to meet residents in a Trump +50 county in Georgia whose well water was polluted by Meta’s massive data center.
“That absolutely merits...national congressional investigation." pic.twitter.com/VS7I38MzAB
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) May 18, 2026
Ocasio-Cortez pressed Kramer about whether the Trump EPA was planning to investigate whether data centers were causing mass degradation of water throughout the country.
"As soon as I get back into my office, I will be looking into exactly what you just talked about," replied Kramer. "Because anywhere, whatever type of construction it is, it is a priority to ensure that water quality standards established by EPA are being met. So we'll be looking into that."
Earlier this year, Ocasio-Cortez joined with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to introduce a bill that would impose a nationwide moratorium on AI data center construction "until strong national safeguards are in place to protect workers, consumers, and communities, defend privacy and civil rights, and ensure these technologies do not harm our environment."
At the same time, Leading the Future—a super political action committee backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and other AI heavyweights—is spending at least $100 million in the 2026 midterm elections to elect lawmakers who aim to pass legislation that would set a single set of AI regulations across the US, overriding any restrictions placed on the technology by state governments.
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