Heavy rain and bitter cold continue to hit Gaza this weekend, with the number of Palestinians killed by the harsh winter weather continuing to rise.
Gaza’s civil defense authorities said two people, including a 7-year-old child, were killed on Sunday after a wall collapsed due to the cold.
As Palestinians seek shelter from heavy rain in bombed-out ruins, aid agencies warn of the dangers posed by dilapidated buildings that are prone to collapse in the cold.
The Hamas-run Gaza Government Media Office (GMO) said in a statement on Sunday that 20 people were killed when homes and buildings collapsed on their heads as they sought refuge from severe weather conditions. At least 49 buildings have collapsed due to bad weather since the start of winter, GMO added.
Strong winds threaten to completely blow away Palestinian shelters, with people forced to survive in flimsy water-soaked tents. A displaced man in Deir al-Balah refugee camp in central Gaza described how a nearby tree fell on top of his tent, destroying his shelter.
“This is the second tree that fell on us in the wind. Where is the world for us? Where are human rights?” Eyad Abu Jadeyan told CNN on Sunday. “We are sitting here in death. God protected us, otherwise everyone here would have been martyred,” he added.
After a night of heavy rain, people in Khan Younis woke up to find water in their tents, said a spokesperson for the Rafah Governorate Civil Defense Department. Ahmed Radwan from the Gaza Civil Defense Agency told CNN: “Even livestock and animals could not live or inhabit[these places]. But people are forced to live in these areas because they have no choice but to return to their destroyed homes.”
A spokesperson said the weather forecast was a new “catastrophic situation” that would worsen the already dire humanitarian situation in the enclave.
The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has stressed that aid is not being allowed to flow into the enclave on the scale needed and urged that if aid flows in, the agency “could redouble its efforts tomorrow.”
“With more rain comes more human misery, despair and death. The harsh winter weather is exacerbating more than two years of suffering. The people of Gaza are surviving in waterlogged flimsy tents and ruins,” UNRWA Executive Director Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement on X.
The latest humanitarian crisis to hit Gaza comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to visit President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago this week amid diplomatic pressure from Washington to reach the next stage of his Gaza peace plan.
