Torrential rain swept across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, flooding hundreds of tents sheltering families displaced by two years of war and leading to the death of a baby girl, local health officials said.
Medics said eight-month-old Rahaf Abu Jazar died of exposure after water inundated her family’s tent in Khan Younis, in the south of the enclave.
Weeping and holding Rahaf in her hands, her mother Hejar Abu Jazar said she had fed the girl before they went to sleep.
“When we woke up, we found the rain over her and the wind on her, and the girl died of cold suddenly,” she told Reuters.
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Municipal and civil defence officials said they were unable to cope with the storm because of fuel shortages and damage to equipment. They said Israel destroyed hundreds of vehicles, including bulldozers and others used to pump water, during the war, which displaced most of the over two million population and left much of Gaza in ruins.
A UN report said 761 displacement sites hosting about 850,000 people are at high risk of flooding and thousands of people had moved in anticipation of heavy rain.
UN and Palestinian officials said at least 300,000 new tents are urgently needed for the roughly 1.5 million people still displaced. Most existing shelters are worn out or made of thin plastic and cloth sheeting.
A ceasefire has broadly held since October, but violence has not completely halted. Palestinian health authorities say Israeli forces have killed 383 people in strikes in Gaza since the truce. Israel says three of its soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire began, and it has attacked scores of fighters.
On Thursday, medics said at least one Palestinian woman was killed and some other people were wounded in Israeli tank shelling in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip. The Israeli military did not offer immediate comment. Medics had earlier said two women were killed in the Jabalia incident.
Amnesty International on Thursday accused Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups for the first time of crimes against humanity during and after the October 7th, 2023 attack that sparked the war in Gaza.
“Palestinian armed groups committed violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and crimes against humanity during their attacks in southern Israel,” the human rights watchdog said in a 173-page report.
Amnesty, which had previously accused Hamas of committing war crimes, added that the group “continued to commit violations and crimes under international law in their holding and mistreatment of hostages and the withholding of bodies seized.”
Amnesty also said that the mass killing of civilians on October 7th amounted “to the crime against humanity of extermination”.
Among the acts listed as crimes against humanity by Amnesty were murder, extermination, imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance, rape and “other forms of sexual violence”. For the latter crimes, it said it was not able to interview survivors except for one case, and therefore could not conclude the scope or scale of sexual violence.
The rights group has also accused Israel of committing genocide in its retaliatory campaign in Gaza, an accusation that Israel has vehemently denied.
The Hamas-led attack resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people and 251 people were taken hostage that day, including 44 who were dead.
Of the 207 hostages taken alive, 41 died or were killed in captivity. All the hostages have been returned as part of a ceasefire in Gaza except for the body of one Israeli officer.
Hamas was “chiefly responsible” for the crimes committed on October 7th, 2023, Amnesty said. Hamas ally Islamic Jihad, as well as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and “unaffiliated Palestinian civilians,” were responsible to a lesser extent, it said.
There was no immediate response from Hamas but the group has previously denied mistreatment of hostages and allegations of crimes against humanity.
The October 7th attack precipitated Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities. Swathes of the enclave are in ruins and much of its population is homeless.
A United Nations report has revealed that during the last three months of the Gaza war, the number of babies dying on the day they were born was 75 per cent higher than the number of such deaths before the war.
Separately, according to Unicef, the UN children’s agency, between July and September 141 babies died on the day they were born in Gaza. One possible reason for this was malnutrition of mothers during pregnancy. During those three months, 1,380 underweight babies died each month, which is double the rate in the pre-war period.
Thousands of children have been admitted to hospitals in Gaza for treatment of severe malnutrition since the ceasefire in October, said Unicef spokesperson Tess Ingram. – Additional reporting: Reuters
