An eight-month-old Palestinian girl died on Thursday from a severe cold in Khan Younis, as winter storms battered Gaza’s displacement camps and exposed the deepening humanitarian catastrophe facing hundreds of thousands of families living in tents after two years of Israeli bombardment.
The infant, Rahaf Abu Jazar, succumbed to hypothermia as temperatures plunged across southern Gaza, where children and families are sheltering in thin, rain-soaked tents that offer little protection from the cold.
Munir al-Bursh, head of Gaza’s Health Ministry, confirmed the death and warned that more young children, elderly people, and patients are at risk as the weather conditions worsen.
“Low temperatures are ravaging children, the elderly, and the sick,” he told Anadolu, saying medical teams are seeing cases of severe shivering, respiratory distress and “possible death,” with almost no access to medicine or treatment.
“Lakes of mud and sewage”
Civil Defence crews described scenes of displacement camps turning into lakes of mud and sewage after heavy rainfall. Entire sites — including al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, al-Bassa and al-Baraka in Deir al-Balah, and parts of Nuseirat and Gaza City — were flooded, sweeping away tents and belongings.
“Displaced citizens, with their children and women, are drowning now,” the agency said, adding that it fielded more than 2,500 distress calls in 24 hours from families trapped in waterlogged shelters.
Tents in Rafah were also evacuated after becoming completely submerged for the second day in a row.
Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal warned that more than 250,000 families in camps across the enclave are vulnerable to hypothermia and flooding, with worn-out tents offering no insulation from the cold.
“People are at risk”
A polar low-pressure system is expected to continue affecting Gaza through Friday, the Gaza media office said earlier in the week, cautioning that hundreds of thousands of displaced people are at risk as their tents fill with water, soaking bedding, clothing and food supplies.
Officials say Gaza needs about 300,000 tents and prefabricated shelters to meet basic housing needs after Israel’s two-year assault destroyed large swathes of residential infrastructure. The UN has estimated reconstruction costs at roughly $70 billion.
Israel has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians and wounded over 171,000 in Gaza since October 2023 in its genocidal war that has reduced most of the enclave to rubble. The attacks have continued despite a ceasefire that took effect in October.
