A rainstorm swept across the Gaza Strip Tuesday, flooding hundreds of tents, collapsing homes sheltering families displaced by two years of war and killing at least six people, local health officials said.
Medics said five people, including two women and a girl, died when homes collapsed near Gaza City’s beach, while a one-year-old boy died of extreme cold in a tent in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza.
Tents were torn from their stakes, some flying dozens of meters before crashing to the ground. Others lay crumpled in muddy pools as families scrambled to salvage what they could. Residents tried to resecure remaining shelters, hammering in loosened pegs and stacking sandbags around the edges to keep floodwaters from pouring inside.
"We didn’t realise what was happening until the wall started collapsing - an eight-metre-high wall, a strong concrete wall. Because of the speed and force of the wind, the wall fell on top of us, onto three tents,” said Bassel Hamuda, a displaced man in Gaza.
"The elderly man, 73 years old, was martyred. His son’s wife was killed, and his son’s daughter was killed,” he said.
Three months since a ceasefire halted major combat, Israeli forces have ordered the near-total depopulation of nearly two thirds of Gaza, forcing its more than 2mn people into a narrow strip near the coast where most live either in makeshift tents or damaged buildings.
Dozens of relatives gathered at a hospital morgue Tuesday for special prayers over bodies laid on medical stretchers before the funerals.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said at least 31 Palestinians had died since the start of the winter season from exposure to cold or the collapse of unsafe buildings damaged by previous Israeli strikes.
It said about 7,000 tents were damaged in the past 48 hours, most of whose occupants have no alternative shelter.
Municipal and civil defence officials said they were unable to cope with the storm because of fuel shortages and damaged equipment. During the war Israel had destroyed hundreds of vehicles needed to respond to the weather emergency, including bulldozers and water pumps.
In December, a UN report said 761 displacement sites hosting about 850,000 people were at high risk of flooding, and thousands had moved in anticipation of heavy rain.
UN and Palestinian officials said at least 300,000 new tents were urgently needed for the roughly 1.5mn people still displaced.
