Bad weather over the past 72 hours has killed 14 people in Gaza, including three children, Mounir Alburush, director of the Gaza-based Ministry of Health, told CNN.
For the past two years, many Palestinians have had no choice but to move into tents or temporary shelters amid a devastating war that has left much of the enclave in ruins.
Tents were submerged in water and Palestinians “wandered through sewage, mud and rubble without proper shelter,” aid group Oxfam said in a statement on Saturday, adding that the difficult situation was “a direct result of systematic aid obstruction.”
Palestinians called for help as their belongings were left soaked and destroyed by the cold and rain.
“My mattress, my blankets, everything, my clothes are soaked in water. … Bring the mattress. Bring the tent. Please help me,” Umm Mustafa told CNN on Friday.
She said she panicked in the middle of the night when the only food left, bags of flour and rice, got wet and spoiled.
“I ran outside screaming for help from my neighbors,” she said. “All my children got soaked with rainwater.”
Gaza authorities and Palestinians say tents, temporary shelters and even buildings, weakened by Israeli shelling during the war, collapsed while families were inside. The 8-month-old baby Rahaf died of hypothermia, her family told CNN.
More than 27,000 tents were washed away and flooded, the Hamas-run government media office said in a statement. At least 250,000 people have been affected by the “complex humanitarian disaster,” the media office said in a statement.
Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire in October, allowing the release of all surviving Israeli hostages and ending a two-year war. Israel authorized aid to Gaza to implement the first phase of the agreement.
However, Oxfam said Israeli authorities “continue to block access to basic shelter materials, fuel and water infrastructure”, exposing people to “completely preventable harm”.
“Storms become deadly when access is denied. This suffering is created by policy, not weather,” the group said in a statement.
The Coordination of Regional Government Activities (COGAT), the Israeli government agency tasked with facilitating aid distribution in the Gaza Strip, said in a statement that Israel was “committed” to and “fully complies” with its “obligations to transport humanitarian aid trucks in accordance with the agreement.”
“With this framework, hundreds of trucks come in every day loaded with food, water, fuel, gas, medicines, medical equipment, tents and shelter equipment,” the authorities said. “In recent months, COGAT has worked with the international community to facilitate the transfer of nearly 270,000 tents and tarpaulins directly to residents of the Gaza Strip.”
“We are planning a humanitarian response as needed for the coming winter,” COGAT said.
Despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly accepting the agreement in September, significant gaps remain in progress on the ceasefire agreement. The United States is pushing for a quick next step, but Israel has conditioned major steps on the return of the last dead hostage and is resisting American efforts to break up a standoff with a group of isolated Hamas militants in Israeli-occupied territory in southern Gaza.
