Three children die of cold in Gaza refugee camp amid Israeli blockade. Israel-Palestine conflict news
The father of three-week-old victim Sila Mahmoud al-Fasih says the family slept on cold sand in a tent exposed to bitter winds.
Three Palestinian children have died of hypothermia in the al-Mawasi refugee camp in southern Gaza in recent days, as temperatures plunge and Israel’s blockade of food, water and essential winter supplies continues.
Ahmed al-Farra, director of the children’s ward at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, confirmed the death of three-week-old Sila Mahmoud al-Fasih on Wednesday, adding that two other children, aged three days and one month, had been brought . In the hospital in the last 48 hours after death from hypothermia.
Referring to Sila, al-Farra said, “She was in good health and was born naturally, but due to the extreme cold in the tent, the temperature dropped significantly, causing her body systems to stop working.” And he died.” Death in an interview with Al Jazeera.
Mahmoud al-Fasih, baby Sila’s father, said the family was living in “poor conditions” in their tent in al-Mwasi, an area of dunes and farmland on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast, close to the southern city of Khan Younis. .
Al-Mawasi was designated as a “safe zone”, but it was repeatedly attacked in the last 14 months of the Israeli offensive.
“We sleep on the sand and we don’t have enough blankets and we feel cold inside our tents,” he told Al Jazeera. “Only God knows our situations. Our situation is very difficult.”
The family’s tent was not windproof and the ground was cold, with temperatures falling to 9 °C (48 °F) on Tuesday night.
The child had woken up crying three times throughout the night. In the morning, his parents found him unresponsive, his body stiff “like wood,” al-Fasih said in another interview with the Associated Press news agency.
He took the girl to Nasir Hospital, but it was already too late to revive her.
Dr. Munir al-Bursh, director general of the health ministry in Gaza, said that Baby Sila “frozen to death from extreme cold”, underlining that the site had been declared by Israel as a “temporary safe humanitarian zone for displaced persons”. . military.
Israeli bombings and ground attacks on Gaza have killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, more than half of whom are women and children.
The attack has caused widespread destruction and displaced about 90 percent of the strip’s 2.3 million residents at times.
Thousands of people have packed into tent camps along the coast as the cold, wet winter sets in. Aid groups are struggling to deliver food and supplies and say there are shortages of blankets, warm clothing and firewood.
“This is a screaming example of the consequences of this unjust war and its impact on the people of the Gaza Strip,” al-Farra said.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
