Gaza Families in Flooded Tents Struggle to Keep Children Warm as Winter Approaches, Nine-Month-Old Dies of Hypothermia
In Gaza City, as temperatures drop at night inside their makeshift shelter, Amira Saad struggles to keep her four-month-old baby, Mohammed, warm. The baby mostly only has thin summer clothes. Unable to afford winter clothing, 27-year-old Amira has borrowed a warm garment from a neighbour, but remains worried about the cold during the night.
Amira lives with 18 family members, including nine children, under a tarp offering little protection from the elements. Finding enough warm clothes and blankets for everyone has become increasingly difficult. The family was displaced from Gaza City's Shujayea neighbourhood and now lives in a makeshift camp west of the city.
Recent heavy rain has flooded their shelter, soaking mattresses, pillows and blankets. Amira says they were flooded while sleeping, as water came inside and soaked everything.
The children mostly have old, torn summer clothes. Amira's mother-in-law, 60-year-old Basima Saad, is also worried about her own 23-year-old daughter, who has a disability and needs warm clothes and medication. Basima says her daughter's hands become as cold as ice, and she keeps her beside her in bed to warm her, just as she would a small child, dressing her before she dresses herself.
With no regular income, the family relies on community kitchens for food, and spare money for winter clothes and blankets is not available. Amira says her husband does not have a job; two days ago he went out to work breaking up rubble, but he broke his hand, and the cold is extremely severe.
The danger to Palestinians living in these conditions, particularly the very young, is not hypothetical. On Thursday, a nine-month-old baby, Kinan Ahmed Raqiq, died of hypothermia. His father told AFP that he woke up in his tent to find that his son's skin had turned blue.
Tragedies like that make Amal al-Maydana, a 46-year-old mother of seven, fearful. She is raising her children alone — her husband Hamza was killed by an Israeli quadcopter in January 2025, and her eldest son Haitham was killed by a sniper in November of the same year, age 25. Originally from Gaza City's Zeitoun neighbourhood, Amal has been displaced six times during the war, losing the family's home, land and car.
Now living in a tent, Amal struggles to provide for her children. Her younger daughters, Rimas and Malak, are still wearing summer clothes despite the arrival of winter, and Amal says everything is expensive — children's clothes, shoes, everything. Rain also seeps through the damaged tarpaulins covering the tent, and with no heating equipment they rely on blankets. She says they have no means of heating themselves and just cover the children with blankets, and she fears another storm will bring more rain and cold.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says 94 percent of Gaza's population urgently needs shelter assistance. Some 65 percent of households live in tents or makeshift shelters, while 650,000 children need winter aid, including warm clothing and blankets. By September, aid agencies had secured enough winter clothing for just 9,000 households and bedding for 50,000 — far short of what was needed — and OCHA said funding shortages were further hampering preparations for winter.
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has warned that winter conditions put children in Gaza at increased risk of hypothermia and respiratory infections — at least 11 children died from hypothermia last winter, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. The agency is seeking 97.5 million dollars for its 2026-2027 winter response, which aims to support 540,000 children and their families across Gaza and the occupied West Bank. UNICEF said on November 9 that flooding had affected more than 106,000 people, while some 950,000 displaced Palestinians were living in flood-prone areas.
The war has killed more than 74,600 Palestinians and wounded over 176,000, and nearly two million people have been displaced, many repeatedly. In Gaza City's Rimal market, 25-year-old shop owner Mohammed Abu Shanar sees the same struggle among his customers — many ask about winter clothing prices, but leave without buying. He sells around four to six winter tracksuits a day and attributes the high prices to shortages of goods entering Gaza and the cost of buying stock from wholesalers. He says if items were selling for 20 or 25 shekels instead of 40 or 50 shekels, perhaps people would be able to buy them. He has invested more than 20,000 shekels in winter stock, but after three weeks of sales he has recovered less than 5,000 shekels.
Anas Hamad, displaced from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, does not have the money to buy from traders. Before the war, he ran a supermarket employing his four brothers; the war destroyed their homes and business, leaving all five university graduates without work. With no income, Anas relies on second-hand markets and hand-me-downs to dress his three children — when his five-year-old daughter, Jana, asked for a new shirt, he could only point to the one she was wearing, which had belonged to her brother. The family has lived in their badly torn tent for around two years, and during the recent downpour their bedding and belongings were soaked, while his three-year-old child was trembling from the cold. Anas says he has to choose between buying food for his children, getting them warm clothes and blankets, or buying tarpaulins to protect the tent from the coming rain, and does not know what to prioritise.
