DayofPal– A one-month baby Jumaa Badran has frozen to death in his family’s semi-like tent on Sunday due to the bitter cold in displacement tents, becoming the fifth Gazan child to die of cold.
Badran’s father said in a video that all of his eight-member family cover themselves with only four blankets, having no source of income. The man who survived Israeli strikes on the north, where he lost his siblings, in-laws, nephews and nieces, has lost his baby to the bitter cold.
More heavy rain and strong winds are expected to hit over the besieged Gaza Strip starting later Sunday and forecast to worsen by Tuesday, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.
The office warned that some waves are expected to rise as high as 2 metres (6ft), and the winter weather would mostly endanger those taking shelter in the tents along the sea, adding that the cold weather would plung thousands of civilians into peril just as the harsh grip of winter tightens, threatening their survival.
In a previous statement, the office revealed that over 110,000 out of 135,000 tents used by displaced Palestinians in the war-torn Gaza Strip are now out of service and have “completely deteriorated”, condemning thereby the Israeli occupation for igniting a devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“This catastrophic humanitarian situation is a direct result of the genocide committed by the ‘Israeli’ occupation army, which has completely destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes of these citizens, forcing them to resort to living in tents that lack the minimum requirements for a decent life,” the statement said.
On Friday, Palestinian nurse Ahmed al-Zaharneh, who was among the crews working at the European Gaza Hospital, froze to death under an “extreme” weather conditions, according to the Health Ministry.
The Ministry said, “His body was found inside his tent in Al-Mawasi area, west of the city of Khan Younis, southern Gaza.”
“This incident comes in light of the difficult humanitarian conditions that displaced citizens are experiencing, as the suffering of Gaza residents increases due to low temperatures and the lack of heating means in tents,” the Ministry added.
At least four other babies also died from hypothermia in southern Gaza last week. Doctors reported last Wednesday that a three-week-old girl froze to death overnight as temperatures plummeted amid a wet winter across the war-torn Palestinian enclave. The baby’s tent was not sealed against the wind and the ground was cold, the doctors said.
On Thursday, another baby, Sila Mahmoud Al-Faseeh, was found unresponsive. By the time doctors reached her, her lungs had deteriorated and she was declared dead from hypothermia. The baby “froze to death from the extreme cold” in al-Mawasi, said Dr Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health, on X.
In another post, he described the tents in Gaza as “fridges of death”, citing the deaths of two other babies due to the bitter cold.
According to Ahmed Al-Farra, head of paediatrics and obstetrics at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the infants were a three-day-old and a one-month-old baby.
The deaths highlight the dire conditions in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crammed into makeshift tents, fleeing Israeli shelling from various parts of the Gaza strip.
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