Weather is compounding the challenges facing displaced people in Gaza, where heavy rains and dropping temperatures are making tents and other temporary shelters uninhabitable.
Government officials in the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave said on Monday that nearly 10,000 tents had been swept away by flooding over the past two days, adding to their earlier warnings about the risks facing those sheltering in low-lying floodplains, including areas designated as humanitarian zones.
Um Mohammad Marouf, a mother who fled bombardments in northern Gaza and now is sheltering with her family in a Gaza City tent said the downpour had covered her children and left everyone wet and vulnerable.
“We have nothing to protect ourselves,” she said outside the United Nations-provided tent where she lives with 10 family members.
Marouf and others living in rows of cloth and nylon tents hung their drenched clothing on drying lines and re-erected their tarpaulin walls on Monday.
Officials from the Hamas-run government said that 81% of the 135,000 tents appeared unfit for shelter, based on recent assessments, and blamed Israel for preventing the entry of additional needed tents. They said many had been swept away by seawater or were inadequate to house displaced people as winter sets in.
The UNestimates that around 90% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, and hundreds of thousands are living in squalid tent camps with little food, water or basic services. Israeli evacuation warnings now cover around 90% of the territory.
“The first rains of the winter season mean even more suffering. Around half a million people are at risk in areas of flooding. The situation will only get worse with every drop of rain, every bomb, every strike,” UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, wrote in a statement on X on Monday.
