Gaza [Palestine], November 8: About 70,000 tents sheltering displaced Palestinians have been flooded in the Gaza Strip within 12 hours of the first winter storm of the season, according to Gaza's Government Media Office.
In a statement on Saturday, the office said initial losses were estimated at about $3mn. Dozens of walls had collapsed and people had been injured, it said, while cracked buildings at risk of collapse posed a growing danger.
The office held Israel "fully responsible" for what it called a disaster caused by the continued closure of crossings and the blocking of shelter and reconstruction materials. It urged the international community and UN agencies to intervene immediately to protect the displaced.
Gaza's civil defence agency said its crews received about 1,500 distress calls in just 10 hours after the rain began early on Saturday, with water levels in several shelter sites rising by 30-40cm (12-16 inches).
"What we feared has actually happened," civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal told Al Jazeera. "A few shelter centres were completely flooded, and everyone inside them has now been forced out into the unknown." Basal said premature babies, the elderly and the sick were most at risk. "Those living in tents are at risk of death at any moment, and of illness at any moment," he said.
The storm also brought down buildings damaged in Israel's genocidal war on the enclave that began in October 2023.
The civil defence agency said rescuers had evacuated residents of a building in the central Nuseirat area that partially collapsed in the strong winds and rain. In northern Gaza, the wall of a separate building fell down due to heavy rainfall, injuring two people, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Footage from camps in Gaza City, Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah showed families wading through ankle-deep water, mattresses and blankets soaked, and children standing barefoot in pools of mud and sewage.
"Even houses can't hold up against this rain, so how can open plastic sheeting?" said Al Jazeera's Nour Khaled, reporting from a camp in Gaza City. She said more than 28,000 widows were among those facing the winter alone with their children.
In al-Mawasi, the coastal area where more than 900,000 displaced people are sheltering in southern Gaza, rain had been falling since 10pm (20:00 GMT) on Friday, Al Jazeera's Rami Abu Taima reported from Khan Younis.
"People woke up to find hundreds, even thousands, of tents flooded across the Gaza Strip," he said. He added that more than 125,000 families living along the coast were at particular risk of having their tents swept away by the sea.
Gaza's emergency committee said more than one million displaced people face a harsh winter, and that the territory urgently needs about 200,000 tents along with heating supplies.
Raed al-Dahshan, director of civil defence in Gaza, told Al Jazeera that crews could do little once they reached flooded families. "Civil defence does not have a single tarpaulin or a single tent," he said. "We deal only with saving lives, and that is not enough." Aid groups blame Israeli restrictions on the entry of shelter materials.
The storm also hit Gaza's battered health system. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, told Al Jazeera that the hospital's emergency department flooded and was out of service for about four hours. He warned of a rise in gastrointestinal, respiratory and skin infections as sewage mixed with rainwater inside tents.
Source: Qatar Tribune
