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SvennoJ 5 days ago
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More than 1,500 tents flooded, unusable in Gaza after days of rain

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 says 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.

It says there were hundreds of other tents where the floodwaters were below 30cm.


As world celebrated New Year, Gaza suffered: Aid worker

The director of the Palestinian NGOs Network, Amjad Shawa, has spoken to Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah, describing the disconnect between the global celebrations beckoning in the New Year and the dire situation in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are seeking refuge from freezing rains, flooding and mud.

“As the world was [celebrating] last night, 2025, the coming New Year, our people, our families – who are staying in tents in a freezing rainy winter – they spent all the night in order to save their children and to collect rest of their belongings,” he said. “It was a very tough night, a very difficult one for the families.

“It wasn’t an easy mission to get these people out from this mud, from this rain, from these freezing conditions, and already we lost seven – six of them children, infants who have died because of the freezing conditions.”


Palestinians sheltering in tents in the Mawasi area struggle with rain and cold weather as tents were flooded by torrential downpour in Khan Younis, southern Gaza on Wednesday


Palestinian children continue to face threat from harsh weather

Children continue to die in Gaza as winter temperatures drop and rain pounds the war-torn Palestinian territory.

In southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, Mahmoud al-Fasih said he found his infant daughter, Sila, “frozen from the cold” in their small tent near al-Mawasi beach, where they were displaced from Gaza City.

He rushed her to the hospital in the area – which Israel has designated a “humanitarian zone” – but she was already dead.

Dr Ahmad al-Farra at Nasser Hospital said the three-week-old baby arrived at the hospital with “severe hypothermia, without vital signs, in cardiac arrest that led to her death”.


Seventh infant dies from cold in Gaza: Health official

The director of field hospitals in Gaza’s health ministry has told Al Jazeera that the number of infants who have died from the cold in the enclave in recent days has risen to seven.

The director warned that there are not enough blankets or warm clothes to protect the hundreds of thousands of displaced residents living in make-shift tents, many of which have been afflicted by heavy rains in recent days. The combination of weather and malnutrition is particularly dangerous for infants, as their bodies lose heat quickly.