UNICEF says nearly 1 million displaced people face flood risk, as Israel reports 91,000 tents delivered and UN agencies say critical supplies remain stuck outside Gaza.
By EEW Magazine Online Editors
A woman hangs laundry outside her tent at a displacement camp in Gaza. Winter rains began over the weekend in Gaza, where most of the population lives in tents and other makeshift shelters. (Faiz Qreqa/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
A woman and three young children were killed Sunday night when heavy rain loosened a sand embankment beside a displacement camp near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and sent it crashing onto the tents below. Neighbors searched by flashlight, breaking apart large rocks with hammers and digging through the sand with shovels to reach the family.
Sohaib Abu Darbali, a witness, told Reuters the collapse sounded like an explosion and left three tents completely buried.
"Whoever did not die from bombs and missiles is dying from buildings collapsing on them, from the collapse of sand and mountains on them," said Amal Al-Zein, 35, a relative of the victims.
UNICEF said the children were 4, 5 and 8 and that the woman was their mother. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), citing local civil defense crews, counted five dead at the site, including three children and two women. OCHA also reported that an infant drowned in separate flooding.
UNICEF said the storm that began Friday, Nov. 6, directly affected more than 106,000 people, damaging or destroying shelters, latrines and belongings. By Sunday, aid groups had received appeals from more than 26,000 households, according to an OCHA report.
Two children stand in a rain-soaked tent in Deir al-Balah, Gaza. (United Nations)
More than 6,000 family shelters were reportedly destroyed and 17,400 damaged, leaving about 3,900 households with no shelter at all. Civil defense crews received 2,166 distress calls and were able to answer 218.
The flooding also reached at least 55 learning spaces serving about 55,000 children.
Most of Gaza's people remain displaced after two years of war. About 1.4 million, or 65% of the population, live in tents or makeshift shelters, OCHA says. UNICEF estimates that 950,000 displaced people are in flood-exposed areas, including 400,000 at extremely high risk, nearly half of them children.
"These children and their mother were killed because they had nowhere safe to sleep. That is the reality in Gaza today," UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said Monday.
On Monday, the Israeli military said more than 91,000 tents and 8,200 trucks of winter supplies had entered Gaza under a plan coordinated with the Board of Peace, the U.S.-backed body overseeing the peace plan. About half of the more than 850 requests it has approved are still undelivered, the military said, because the UN and aid groups have not yet brought the equipment in, partly due to logistical and budget problems it called unrelated to Israel.
OCHA reported that more than 150,000 tents bought by aid groups and governments were waiting outside Gaza, including about 117,000 from the Egyptian Relief Committee stored in Al-Arish, Egypt. Stocks of tents, tarpaulins, blankets and clothing inside Gaza are nearly exhausted, the agency said.
The Board of Peace acknowledged progress Monday but called Israel's steps insufficient and urged the government to authorize all necessary winter and humanitarian supplies. The board said Israeli delays had also slowed the start of weapons decommissioning and the transfer of authority from Hamas. It pressed Hamas to meet its own commitments under the plan, including disarmament.
The disagreement has a concrete test in Gaza City. On Tuesday, UNICEF told Reuters that Israel had rejected equipment for a $3 million repair of the Sheikh Radwan stormwater basin, which is now contaminated with sewage. Only two of its six pumps still work, according to UNICEF.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said the agency spent a year developing the plan with Israeli authorities and the Board of Peace before COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, rejected it on security grounds in recent days.
"Toxic sewage could flow into the streets and tents of Gaza City, forcing children and families from their makeshift homes once more," Elder said.
Israel's military said Monday it is reviewing requested equipment that could be exploited by Hamas and advancing alternatives that meet humanitarian needs. It noted it had approved 12 sewage vacuum trucks for the International Committee of the Red Cross. Israel has said no reconstruction can happen before Hamas disarms.
The World Health Organization warned Tuesday of significant risks of communicable disease from flooding, poor sanitation and limited health and water services.
UNICEF said that in the past week it reached at least 10,000 children with winter clothing and thermal blankets, handed out tarpaulins to flooded families and cleared sewage and stormwater at more than 50 locations. The agency is calling for pumps, generators and spare parts to be allowed in to restore water and sanitation services.
Last winter, at least 11 children in Gaza were reported to have died of hypothermia, according to UNICEF.
"The worst of winter is yet to come," Russell said.
