The key facts

  • A woman and three children (aged 8, 6 and 4) were killed, six people injured
  • At least 70,000 tents flooded in the first hours of the rains; the UN reports more than 26,000 affected households
  • Gaza's reconstruction is provided for in the ceasefire agreement, but there is no progress due to disagreements over Hamas's disarmament

Slope collapse onto a camp for displaced people

In the Gaza Strip, heavy rain caused a sandy slope to collapse onto tents housing displaced Palestinians. One woman and three children were killed, and six more people were injured. According to a report by Zamon.uz citing Reuters, the incident occurred on Sunday evening south of the city of Deir al-Balah in the central part of Gaza: rain washed out a rocky sandy slope next to a camp for displaced families. Two of the children killed were aged 8 and 6, and another was 4.

Rescue efforts and the scale of the flooding

Rescue work was carried out at the scene: local residents used sledgehammers and shovels to clear away sand and rock debris and searched for people under the rubble. The incident became part of the broader consequences of the winter rains. According to local authorities, in the very first hours of the rains, which began on Saturday, at least 70,000 tents were flooded in Gaza. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that following the rains at the end of the week, it received requests from more than 26,000 households with damaged housing or property.

Context: tents instead of housing and a stalled recovery

A significant portion of Gaza's population currently lives in tents or in the ruins of bombed-out buildings, and with the onset of the winter rains, flooding and collapsing shelters pose an additional threat. Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for Gaza's Civil Defense, stressed that tents do not protect people from rain and heat, and called the reconstruction of the region the only solution to the problem. Reuters notesthat the ceasefire agreement reached last year with US mediation also provided for the reconstruction of Gaza, but due to disagreements over Hamas's disarmament and the withdrawal of Israeli troops, there has been no significant progress. Israel, for its part, says reconstruction work cannot begin until Hamas is disarmed.