A father in central Gaza is alive because he was a few minutes late for dinner. A child had shouted for him to come and share the meal, neighbours say, and he was still outside when a sodden bank of sand and rock gave way on Sunday, burying the shelter where his family sat.
Four children and one woman lost their lives when the slope came down near Deir al-Balah, leaving at least three tents flattened. Civil defence officials blamed the storm that has lashed the territory since Friday. With power down and almost no heavy machinery available, rescuers and residents dug with shovels and their hands, and young men had to smash a large boulder with hammers to reach those trapped beneath. Neighbour Abdul Karim al-Sahhar, whose own shelter was wrecked, called it “a horrifying sight”.
The season’s first winter storm has hit a population with little left to protect it. Local authorities say water poured into some 70,000 tents as soon as the rain began, and UN teams have logged damage reports from upwards of 26,000 families. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people live in camps or in the shells of bombed buildings, and rebuilding has not started.
Camps are so packed that the tragedy “was waiting to happen”, in the words of Toby Fricker of Unicef. Save the Children says Israel keeps refusing entry to the mobile homes promised under last October’s truce, so huge numbers of children face a second winter in tents. Israel’s aid coordination unit Cogat counters that upwards of 91,000 tents have gone in, alongside roughly 8,200 truckloads of sheeting, bedding and warm clothes.
Gaza’s Hamas-run media office blamed Israel, Washington and the international community, condemning what it called global “inaction”.
