Displaced Palestinians in dire need of tents, blankets, warm clothing in harsh winter climate.
A baby girl whose family was displaced by Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza has died of exposure to the winter cold as Storm Byron lashed the enclave amid Israel’s continued restrictions on essential winter supplies.
Eight-month-old Rahaf Abu Jazar was reported dead on Thursday after her family’s tent in Khan Younis took in water as heavy rainfall flooded tent camps across the enclave overnight, according to the Reuters news agency.
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Her mother, Hejar Abu Jazar, fed the baby before they went to sleep. “When we woke up, we found the rain over her and the wind on her, and the girl died of cold suddenly,” she told Reuters.
With hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families now sheltering in flimsy tents, Gaza’s civil defence agency struggled to cope, receiving more than 2,500 phone calls over a 24-hour period.
The agency reported that three buildings collapsed in Gaza City due to the storm.
Meanwhile, tents and other winter supplies remain blocked at the border as Israel continues to restrict the flow of aid into the enclave.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said only 15,600 tents had been brought into Gaza since the ceasefire came into effect in October.
Those tents have gone to help approximately 88,000 Palestinians, according to NRC. This is in a territory where 1.29 million people are in need of shelter.
Israeli rights group B’Tselem said more than 6,500 trucks are currently waiting to be allowed by Israel into Gaza with essential winter supplies, including tents, blankets, warm clothing and hygiene materials.
Jonathan Crickx, chief of communication at UNICEF Palestine, said the scale of the disaster was “huge”, warning of a looming health disaster as children wandered the camps barefoot.
“What we’re scared of is that there is very poor hygiene, and all that pouring rain could enable the appearance of waterborne diseases like acute diarrhoea,” he said.
Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said many families were leaving the seaport area as the winds picked up on Thursday. “They’re trying to get deeper inside Gaza City, to shelter in any of the remaining intact buildings – at least for the night,” he said.
As twilight descended, Mahmoud said many families faced a difficult night ahead. “Along with every other struggle that people have been going through for the past two years, there’s another battle now with the forces of nature,” he said.
Farhan Haq, spokesperson for United Nations chief Antonio Guterres, warned that more children could die of hypothermia. “That’s why we need to make sure that we can get warm clothing, tents and tarps and shelters [into Gaza],” he said.
The UN’s humanitarian office processed more than 160 flooding alerts since Thursday morning as Storm Byron barrelled through the enclave, said Haq.