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Heavy rain flooded tens of thousands of tents housing displaced Palestinians in war-ravaged Gaza on Saturday, leaving families without shelter and worsening their already dire humanitarian conditions, Palestinian authorities said.
Around 70,000 tents sheltering tens of thousands of displaced people were inundated on the first day of rainfall, the Hamas-run government media office said in a statement.
Dozens of damaged walls and roofs also collapsed, causing injuries, some of them critical, it added.
Hundreds of displaced families were seen fleeing flooded camps in Gaza City and central and northern parts of the territory from early Saturday.
Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told AFP that his teams had received more than 1,500 emergency calls overnight from residents seeking assistance after their tents were flooded. He said the agency was operating without equipment or adequate resources.
“We have issued an urgent distress call to the international community and humanitarian organisations to intervene immediately to save hundreds of thousands of displaced people from the flooding of their tents,” Bassal said, adding that the authorities could not cope with the storm alone.
The rainfall has further compounded the suffering of families living in makeshift shelters.
“We were not able to save the mattresses, and all the clothes were soaked. Our suffering is repeated every winter,” said Um Muhammad al-Hersh, 45, who lives with her family in a tent in western Gaza.
Maryam Odeh, 34, a resident of Deir al-Balah, said she was struggling to protect her children.
“My children ask me where we will sleep tonight, and I have no answer,” she told AFP.
Khaled al-Najjar, 41, said families feared not only flooding but also the cold weather and widespread diseases.
A coalition of Palestinian civil society organisations warned that the flooding threatened the lives of hundreds of thousands of residents and could trigger the spread of diseases and epidemics.
The coalition urged the international community to pressure Israel to allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza without restrictions.
A fragile ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, following two years of war that began after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Despite the truce, which was reached through mediation by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, the Israeli military has continued airstrikes and ground operations almost daily.
Mustafa Qazzaat, a Gaza City council member and official with the territory’s emergency committee, said Israel had not allowed prefabricated homes to enter Gaza since the ceasefire began, permitting only limited numbers of tents.
Gaza urgently needs 200,000 prefabricated homes, along with heavy machinery to clear rubble, reopen main roads and restore electricity and heating, Qazzaat told AFP.