Gaza genocide: Babies in tent camps freeze to death
Doctors say at least three Palestinian babies have died of hypothermia in displacement camps in southern Gaza as temperatures plummet and Israel’s blockade on food, water and essential winter supplies continues.
“She was like wood,” says Mahmoud al-Faseeh, the father of the three-week-old baby girl who froze to death in the al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza.
On Wednesday morning, al-Faseeh found his daughter unresponsive.
“We’re living in bad conditions inside our tent,” al-Faseeh said.
“We sleep on the sand, and we don’t have enough blankets. We feel the cold inside our tent. Only God knows our conditions. Our situation is very difficult,” he said.
“It was very cold overnight, and as adults, we couldn’t even take it. We couldn’t stay warm,” he told The Associated Press news agency.
The deaths come amid warnings from aid groups that nearly a million Palestinians in the war-torn enclave do not have adequate shelter to survive the winter. They note that temperatures in Gaza can fall to 6 degrees Celsius during the winter.
Palestinians, who have been forced to flee Israeli attacks over and over again, are taking shelter in makeshift tents made from tarpaulin, blankets, cardboard and even old rice sacks as Israel’s relentless bombardment means fewer buildings remain standing in Gaza this winter.
Israeli authorities are also denying aid groups’ requests to bring in supplies and build shelters that can withstand Gaza’s winter conditions.
The Norwegian Refugee Council says only 285,000 displaced Palestinians in Gaza had received essential shelter materials by late November. This leaves some 945,000 people still in need of assistance.
