Winter storm floods about 70,000 tents in Gaza, media office says

The storm also brought down buildings already damaged in the conflict that began in October 2023. Civil Defence said a building in the central Nuseirat area partially collapsed in strong winds and rain, and rescuers evacuated residents. Wafa reported that a wall fell in northern Gaza due to heavy rainfall, injuring two people.

Gaza’s Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal described the scene: “What we feared has actually happened. A few shelter centres were completely flooded, and everyone inside them has now been forced out into the unknown.” He said premature babies, the elderly and the sick were most at risk.

Many of the tents were put up in the first year of displacement and are now in their fourth, according to Al Jazeera’s report. Under the ceasefire’s humanitarian protocol, they were meant to be replaced with caravans, but Israel has not allowed them into the territory.

In al-Mawasi, where more than 900,000 displaced people are sheltering, rain fell from Friday evening. Al Jazeera’s reporter said people woke to find hundreds, even thousands, of tents flooded across the Gaza Strip. Gaza’s emergency committee said more than a million displaced people face winter dangers and that the territory urgently needs about 200,000 tents along with heating supplies.

The storm also hit Gaza’s battered health system. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of al-Shifa Medical Complex, said the hospital’s emergency department flooded and was out of service for about four hours. He warned of a rise in gastrointestinal, respiratory and skin infections as sewage mixed with rainwater inside tents. “We will see many deaths, in the dozens and perhaps the hundreds, among newborns who need warmth,” he said.

Mohammed Salha, director of the Palestinian NGO Network, said only 180 to 200 trucks were entering Gaza daily, far short of the 600 agreed under the ceasefire protocol, and that only about 40 of those carried humanitarian aid. He said 50,000 tents were waiting on the Egyptian side of the border, adding that international pressure on Israel to allow more supplies was “timid”.

The Government Media Office held Israel “fully responsible” for what it called a disaster caused by the continued closure of crossings and the blocking of shelter and reconstruction materials. It urged UN agencies and the international community to intervene immediately to protect the displaced.