At least five Palestinians including two toddlers drowned in a “sewage tsunami” today, when a water treatment reservoir burst its embankment, flooding a village in the northern Gaza Strip.

The deluge, triggered by the collapse of a system aid organisations had long warned was dangerously overburdened, submerged dozens of homes in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Nasr beneath a cesspool of foul-smelling effluent.

Two women in their 70s, a teenage girl and two boys aged one and two died in the flood. At least 15 people were injured and local medics say scores more are still missing.

Village children clung to wooden doors floating on the putrid waters and rescuers paddled through the village in makeshift boats in search of victims. Frantic goats and cows, staple food for the Bedouin shepherds, were also pulled to safety.

Tawfir al-Bansh, a resident said: “We woke up at 10 this morning with sewage water pouring into our homes and covering everything.”

Ziad Abu Thabet, mayor of Umm al-Nasr, said 70 percent of the village’s mostly ramshackle homes had been buried in raw sewage. He said: “The situation is very bad.”

By late afternoon, receding flood waters had left a sticky residue of concentrated excrement that further hampered rescue efforts.

Palestinian television proclaimed that a “sewage tsunami” had rocked Gaza as an adviser to Mahmud Abbas, the president, declared the village a disaster area.

Angry villagers are reported to have opened fire on the convoy of Hani al-Qawasmeh, the interior minister, who rushed to the scene to inspect the damage.

In Israel, Defence Minister Amir Peretz ordered the army to provide assistance to the victims if asked to do so by the Palestinian Authority.

The Hamas movement, the leading partner in a newly formed Palestinian unity government, blamed the disaster on a foreign aid boycott slapped on the Palestinian Authority a year ago when the Islamist hardliners first came to power. Israel and the West consider Hamas a terrorist outfit.

In a statement, Hamas said: “The overflowing of the [reservoir] is one of the results of the suspension of international aid to our people, which is preventing the government from improving and developing infrastructure.”

As far back as January 2004, UN aid agencies in the Gaza Strip had warned that the sewage treatment facility was operating far beyond its capacity and posed a grave danger to nearby residents.

Designed to serve just 50,000 people, the plant was then handling waste from 190,000 Gaza residents.

A UN report found that excess sewage had already flooded around 110 acres, and 50 percent of children in Umm Al-Nasr had developed problems with their digestive systems, a UN report found.

The report concluded: “Unless action is taken to address this problem, water in this effluent lake will spill out over the holding basins into residential areas, and directly into homes.”

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