Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, has warned that cases of waterborne diseases are growing in Gaza because people do not have access to clean water and the weather is getting warmer, Al Jazeera reports.

“It is becoming very hot there,” McGoldrick told reporters on Friday. “People are getting much less water than they need, and as a result, there have been waterborne diseases due to the lack of safe and clean water and the disruption of the sanitation systems.

“We have to find a way in the months ahead of how we can have a better supply of water into the areas where people are currently crowded at the moment,” he said, after visiting the territory.

Experts say contaminated water and poor sanitation are linked to diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery and hepatitis A. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recorded more than 345,000 cases of diarrhoea, including more than 105,000 in children under five since the war began.

The Gaza Strip’s only natural source of water is the Coastal Aquifer Basin, which runs along the eastern Mediterranean coast from the northern Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, through Gaza and into Israel.