Strong winter winds collapsed walls onto flimsy tents for Palestinians displaced by war in Gaza, killing at least four people, hospital authorities said Tuesday. Gaza’s Health Ministry also said a 1-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight, as cold weather and storms worsened living conditions for families sheltering in makeshift housing.
The dead included two women, a girl and a man, Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said. The hospital said three members of the same family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 8-meter (26-foot) high wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area along the Mediterranean shore of Gaza City. Shifa Hospital said at least five others were injured. The hospital also said a second woman was killed when a wall fell on her tent in the western part of the city.
Relatives began clearing rubble and rebuilding tent shelters for survivors after the funeral, according to the report. Bassel Hamouda said after the funeral, “The world has allowed us to witness death in all its forms,” adding, “It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip.”
Dangerous conditions persisted across Gaza after more than two years of devastating Israeli bombardment and amid aid shortfalls, with the ceasefire in effect since Oct. 10. The report said aid groups have said Palestinians broadly lack shelter adequate for frequent winter storms, and that many residents live in tents after their homes were reduced to rubble.
The U.N. humanitarian office reported that hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters were blown away or heavily damaged. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the U.N. and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, tarps, blankets and clothes, along with nutrition and hygiene items across Gaza, in efforts to reduce deaths from the cold.
In the central town of Zawaida, Associated Press footage showed inundated tents Tuesday morning as people tried to rebuild their shelters. In Beit Lahiya, displaced resident Yasmin Shalha told AP that winds lifted the tarps around her and that the tent collapsed over her family as they slept. “The winds were very, very strong. The tent collapsed over us,” she said, adding, “As you can see, our situation is dire.”
Along the shore in southern Gaza, tents were swept into the Mediterranean, families scavenged what they could from the water, and some built sand barriers to hold back rising water. Shaban Abu Ishaq said the sea took “our mattresses, our tents, our food and everything we owned,” as he dragged part of a tent out of the sea in the Muwasi area of Khan Younis.
UNICEF spokesman James Elder said in a video briefing at a U.N. briefing in Geneva that at least 100 children under age 18 have been killed since the truce began due to “military means,” a category he described as including drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. Elder also said the “bombings and shootings have slowed” during the ceasefire, but have not stopped, telling reporters, “So what the world now calls calm would be considered a crisis anywhere else.”
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the 1-year-old in Deir al-Balah was the seventh fatality due to the cold conditions since winter started. The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, said it recorded more than 440 people killed by Israeli fire whose bodies were brought to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect, and said those figures are generally reliable, according to U.N. agencies and independent experts.
Separately, Israel’s military said it exchanged fire Tuesday with six people spotted near troops deployed in southern Gaza, killing at least two in western Rafah. The AP report said Gaza’s population of more than 2 million has struggled to keep cold weather and storms at bay while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing needed during winter months.
The report also said residents are not able to return to their homes in Israeli-controlled areas of Gaza, and quoted Mohamed al-Sawalha, a 72-year-old man from Jabaliya, describing conditions as “barely livable,” saying, “It doesn’t work neither in summer nor in winter,” and “Now we live in a tent. Even sheep don’t live like we do.”