A devastating winter rainstorm has swept through the Gaza Strip, killing at least six displaced Palestinians and leaving families in flooded, makeshift camps exposed to freezing conditions.
Storm Brings Destruction to Makeshift Camps
Health officials reported that a powerful storm, driven by strong winds and heavy rainfall, struck overnight. The tempest flooded hundreds of tents, tore shelters from the ground, and left displaced families scrambling to secure their few remaining possessions. Five people, including two women and a young girl, died when homes sheltering displaced families collapsed near Gaza City’s coastline. In a separate tragedy in central Gaza's Deir al-Balah, a toddler succumbed to hypothermia inside a tent.
Among the dead were three members of the same family. Medics confirmed that 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law were killed when an eight-metre-high wall collapsed onto their tent during high winds in a coastal area of Gaza City. At least five others were injured in that collapse.
Families Left Scrambling in the Mud
Relatives gathered on Tuesday morning to clear rubble and attempt to rebuild shelters for surviving family members. "We didn’t realise what was happening until the wall started collapsing," Bassel Hamouda told Reuters after the funeral. "Because of the speed and force of the wind, the wall fell on top of us, onto three tents."
Across Gaza City, people tried to reinforce their remaining shelters, hammering pegs back into sodden ground and stacking sandbags in a futile attempt to keep floodwaters at bay. Dozens of families were seen trying to salvage belongings that had been washed into the Mediterranean Sea.
Saeed Saadallah, 65, saw his family's tent swept away into the water. "The sea is hitting us, the wind is hitting us, the rain is hitting us," he said, pointing to the shoreline where clothing and bedding were lost. His family of ten now has nowhere else to go.
A Deepening Humanitarian Catastrophe
This disaster compounds an already severe humanitarian crisis. Three months after a ceasefire halted major fighting, more than two million people have been pushed into a narrow coastal strip, most living in fragile tents or heavily damaged buildings. Local officials said the emergency response was crippled by fuel shortages and destroyed equipment, with vital vehicles like bulldozers and water pumps damaged during the war.
The Gazan government’s media office stated that at least 31 Palestinians have died since the start of winter due to exposure or the collapse of unsafe structures. The health ministry confirmed the toddler in Deir al-Balah was the seventh person to die from hypothermia this winter, following earlier reports of a seven-day-old newborn and a four-year-old girl.
The United Nations has issued stark warnings, noting that at least 300,000 new tents are urgently needed for the roughly 1.5 million people still displaced. A UN report in December highlighted that hundreds of displacement sites were at high risk of flooding. "In Gaza, winter weather is adding to the suffering of families already pushed to the brink," UNRWA said, citing cold, flooding, and damaged shelters as new dangers.
While Israel states that hundreds of aid trucks enter Gaza daily, international aid groups maintain that supplies of food, medical equipment, and shelter materials remain critically insufficient. This marks Gaza's third winter since the outbreak of major conflict in October 2023, with displaced families facing increasingly desperate conditions.
