Heavy rain on Saturday flooded tens of thousands of tents housing displaced Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, washing away shelters and soaking blankets and mattresses, local authorities said, as the first winter storm of the season swept through the war-devastated territory.
The Hamas-run government media office said about 70,000 tents sheltering tens of thousands of displaced people had been flooded on the first day of the rains, and that dozens of cracked walls and roofs had collapsed, causing injuries, some of them critical. No fatalities had been reported, according to the authorities cited by Reuters.
Gaza’s civil defence service said it had received more than 1,500 distress calls from displaced residents during the night. Its spokesman, Mahmoud Basal, said some shelter centres had been completely flooded, forcing everyone inside out into the open. He said the agency was operating without equipment or capabilities, and appealed to the international community and humanitarian organisations to intervene immediately.
At a tent encampment in Gaza City, some people tried to repair their tents, while others used sand to reinforce them and keep the water out. Water levels at several shelter sites rose by 30 to 40 centimetres, and footage from camps in Gaza City, Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah showed families wading through ankle-deep water, with mattresses and blankets soaked and children standing barefoot in pools of mud and sewage.
Olfat Magdoub, a Gaza resident, tried in vain to sweep water away from her tent. “This is the first day of rain, and of course we are already flooded. What will happen if it rains again the next day? This is only the first day and we’re already overwhelmed,” she said. Um Muhammad al-Hersh, 45, a tent resident in western Gaza, said they had not been able to save the mattresses and all the clothes were soaked. “Our suffering is repeated every winter,” she said. Maryam Odeh, 34, who lives with her children in Deir al-Balah, said she no longer knew how to protect her children. “My children ask me where we will sleep tonight, and I have no answer,” she said.
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 had destroyed hundreds of vehicles, including bulldozers and water pumps, during the war, which displaced most of the territory’s more than two million residents. Most of the population now lives in tent camps. Hamas blamed Israel for not allowing shelters and construction materials into Gaza. COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, did not immediately comment on those accusations, but said it had stepped up efforts to improve sanitary conditions before the heavy rain.
The scale of the need is vast. The United Nations humanitarian office said in October that about 950,000 displaced Palestinians were living in places exposed to moderate or high flood risk, including more than 400,000 in areas classed as highly vulnerable. Gaza’s emergency committee has said the territory urgently needs about 200,000 tents along with heating supplies. A fragile ceasefire came into effect on October 10, 2025, after two years of war that began on October 7, 2023. Palestinian authorities say more than 74,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its assault on the territory.
