Palestinians seek shelter in Gaza’s largest football stadium

Palestinians gather at Yarmouk Stadium to seek shelter amid the rising tensions. Pic/Getty

Thousands of displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza have sought refuge in Yarmouk Sports Stadium, one of the largest soccer arenas in the city. Families now scrape by with little food or water as they try to keep one step ahead of Israel's latest offensive.

With their makeshift tents hugging the shade below the stadium's seating, their clothes hang in the July sun across the dusty, dried-up soccer field. Under the covered benches where players used to sit, Um Bashar, a displaced woman, bathes a toddler standing in a plastic tub while expressing the problems faced during their constant change of shelters. "We woke up and found tanks in front of the door," she says. "We didn't take anything with us, not a mattress, not a pillow, not any clothes, not a thing. Not even food."

She fled with a group of 70 other people to Yarmouk Sports Stadium, which is a little under two-miles (3 kilometres) north-west of Shijaiyah, as it was heavily bombed and largely emptied early in the war. Many of the people who ended up in the stadium say they have nothing to return to. "We left our homes," said one man, Hazem Abu Thoraya, "and all of our homes were bombed and burned, and all those around us were as well."

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