Gaza aid worker warns of worsening conditions

Syed Muhammad Faisal Sami said refugees desperately needed help heading into winter

A British aid worker who recently returned from the Middle East warned the situation for refugees in Gaza was likely to get worse over the winter.

Syed Muhammad Faisal Sami, head of the Birmingham-based Faizen Global Relief Foundation, called for more essential supplies to be sent.

He said: "They don't have any shelters, they don't have any food, they are running out of water and now the winter is starting as well."

Many of Gaza's 2.3 million residents are sheltering in the south after being previously ordered to leave the north by Israel.

Israel's military has been expanding its ground offensive against Hamas.

It said it would operate with "maximum force" in the south, as it had done in the north - where there has been widespread destruction over the past eight weeks.

Mr Sami was in the region for three days and said aid agencies were trying their best to help those who had been forced to leave their homes.

He estimated his charity's containers, sent from Turkey, had fed about 41,000 people in Gaza so far.

Israel launched a full-scale campaign in Gaza in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack by Hamas gunmen on 7 October, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and about 240 others taken hostage.

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says almost 15,900 people have been killed in the territory since the war began, while the UN says a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding.