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02-01-2025
GAZA: Days of heavy rains have flooded hundreds of makeshift shelters across Gaza, piling more misery on displaced Palestinians as Israel continues to restrict the entry of humanitarian aid amid its genocide.
Forcibly displaced families across Gaza are struggling to keep their children warm and save what few belongings they are left with.
While the weather is expected to improve in the coming days, for some, it is already too late. At least seven people, including six babies, have died of hypothermia over the past week.
The cold weather has placed Gaza’s already devastated healthcare system under further strain. A field hospital was flooded in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis city.
The Palestinian Civil Defence says floodwaters rose to more than 30cm (12 inches) in the affected tents, leaving displaced Palestinians exposed to the cold and causing damage to their belongings and mattresses.
The emergency service said the tents located in areas including northern Gaza City, southern Khan Younis, as well as in central Deir el-Balah were rendered unusable because of the flooding.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crammed into unsuitable tents, most of which were hastily set up in Deir el-Balah, Khan Younis and Rafah, as Gaza’s 2.4 million residents endure severe shortages of drinkable water, food and medicines. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed at least 45,541 Palestinians and wounded 108,338 since October 7, 2023.
In the second year of an Israeli genocide in Gaza, weather has added an extra element of suffering to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians forcibly displaced, often multiple times, while efforts to agree a ceasefire go nowhere.
Jumaa al-Batran, just 20 days old, died of hypothermia, one of six Palestinian infants who have died of exposure and cold during recent days in Gaza, according to doctors their deaths underlining the severity of the situation before vulnerable families. International aid agencies say Israeli forces have been hampering aid deliveries, making the humanitarian crisis even worse.
“Since I am an adult, I may take this and endure it, but what did the young one do to deserve this?” Jumaa’s mother, Noura al-Batran said. “He could not endure it, he could not endure the cold or the hunger and this hopelessness.”
Dozens of tents, many already tattered from months of use, have been blown away or flooded by the strong winds and rain, leaving families struggling to repair the damage, patching torn sheets of plastic and piling up sand to hold back the water.
It is another aspect of the humanitarian crisis facing Gaza’s 2.3 million population, caught by the relentless Israeli bombings, which have killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, according to Gaza officials, and turned the enclave into a wasteland of rubble. The United Nations relief agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, on Sunday, said aid is nowhere near enough and a ceasefire was desperately needed to deliver as famine loomed.
Earlier this month, Israeli and Hamas leaders expressed hopes that talks brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United States could lead to an agreement to halt the fighting but optimistic talk of a deal before the end of the year has faded.
Cold weather in Gaza has claimed the life of a baby, the sixth to die in a week, according to medical sources, as Israel continues its relentless attacks on hospitals across the strip.
One-month-old Ali al-Batran died on Monday at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported, quoting medical sources who attributed his death to plummeting temperatures. (Int’l News Desk)
