Municipality strike spreads across Gaza

Gaza City: A strike by municipality workers over unpaid wages has lead to a huge pile up of garbage across Gaza, spreading to the territory's five biggest towns, in the widest sign of public dissatisfaction with the Palestinians' new coalition government.

The strike began a week ago in Gaza City, where workers protested over six months of undue wages. By Saturday, some 15,000 workers there and in Khan Younis, Rafah, Deir El Balah and Jebaliya had joined the strike.

A strike organizer, Sakr Hamdan, appealed to the government to include municipal workers in an emergency aid project funded by the European Union, which is helping to pay health and education workers.

Hamdan said, "We are sorry to see Gaza's streets full of garbage, but since everyone has forgotten us, we have no choice."

Government workers across Gaza and the West Bank have been only partly paid since Islamic Hamas militants took control of the Cabinet last March, provoking crippling international sanctions meant to force it to recognise Israel and renounce violence.

The tons of garbage and burning of rubbish in bins to make room for more refuse has only added to Gaza's already widespread environmental problems.

Less than three weeks ago, a sewage reservoir in northern Gaza collapsed, killing five people in a cascade of waste and mud that swamped a village.