Hypothermia

Another Palestinian Infant Dies of Hypothermia in Storm-Battered Gaza

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A Palestinian man carries the shrouded body of Taim Al-Khawaja, an infant who died of hypothermia in the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, on December 12, 2025. (Photo by Hamza Qraiqea/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Palestinian babies freeze to death as shelters and lifesaving humanitarian aid—located just a few miles away—for 1 million civilians is blocked by Israel,” noted one journalist.

A second Palestinian infant and a young girl died of hypothermia in Gaza as heavy rains and flooding—whose effects are exacerbated by Israel’s genocidal annihilation and ongoing siege of the coastal strip—raised the death toll from Storm Byron to at least 16.

Taim Al-Khawaja—who was several months old—died in the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza, while 9-year-old Hadeel al-Masri died in a shelter west of Gaza City, according to local officials. Their deaths follow that of Rahaf Abu Jazar, an 8-month-old who died Thursday of exposure after floodwaters inundated her family’s tent in Khan Younis.

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At least five other people were killed when a building in Beit Lahia collapsed amid the storm, and two others were killed when a wall collapsed onto tents housing displaced Palestinians in the Remal neighorhood of Gaza City. According to Gaza’s Government Media Office (GMO), at least 13 buildings have collapsed and more than 27,000 tents have been destroyed or left uninhabitable by Byron’s winds, rain, and floodwater.

While farmers in neighboring Israel welcomed the torrential rains, which delivered relief from drought conditions, the storm is devastating Palestinians already reeling and weakened from nearly 800 days of war and siege. Israel’s US-backed onslaught has left more than 250,000 Gazans dead, maimed, or missing and 2 million more starved, sickened, or displaced. Roughly 1.5 million Palestinians are currently living in tents or other makeshift shelters.

The recent hypothermia deaths evoked horrific memories of the past two winters in Gaza, when more than a dozen Palestinians—most of them infants and children—died from hypothermia caused by exposure. While many Israelis and their supporters abroad point to the relatively mild Mediterranean winters in an effort to deny these deaths, experts note that hypothermia can be deadly at temperatures over 60°F (15°C) in overexposed conditions such as those in Gaza.

Reporting from Gaza, Al Jazeera‘s Ibrahim al-Khalili said Friday that genocide-ravaged Gazans are now enduring “an added layer of suffering.”

“The tents are collapsing. The cold is unbearable. Basically, they don’t have anywhere to go. What is unfolding is devastating,” he said. “It’s not just a storm; it’s a new wave of displacement even after the war has stopped. Many people here told me that a new war has really begun after this flooding, and people are being forced to flee whatever fragile shelters they had.”

Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem on Friday called the recent exposure deaths a “continuation of the war of extermination.”

“The successive collapses of homes bombed during the war of extermination on the Gaza Strip, caused by the storm, and the resulting deaths, reflect the unprecedented scale of the humanitarian disaster left by this criminal Zionist war,” he said.

Jonathan Crickx, chief of communications for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told Agence France-Presse Friday that Gazans are also enduring “absolutely appalling hygiene and sanitary conditions.”

“There aren’t enough toilets; there are places—I saw some in Gaza City—where large pools of water are essentially open sewers right next to the displacement camps,” he added.

While the shaky two-month ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has somewhat eased the Israeli blockade on Gaza, the GMO said Friday that “the occupation continues to close crossings and prevent the entry of humanitarian aid and materials that could provide shelter.”

“This includes blocking the entry of 300,000 tents, prefabricated mobile homes, and caravans,” the agency added.

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In a statement Friday, Doctors Without Borders Gaza emergency coordinator Caroline Seguin said that the charity is “very, very worried about the next month with the winter coming and the heavy rain.”

“Last year we saw a huge increase in respiratory infections for children, diarrhea as well, and of course all the wounded that are living inside the tents will have big difficulties to heal their wounds and will have probably an increase of infection for the wound of the wounded,” Seguin noted. “It’s near to be not possible to live in this conditions.”

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.

Continue ReadingAnother Palestinian Infant Dies of Hypothermia in Storm-Battered Gaza

UNICEF Says Deaths of More Gaza Children ‘Tragically Foreseeable’ as Israeli Assault Continues

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Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A Palestinian girl cries as Palestinians who escaped from the attacks of the Israeli army and took shelter in the Khan Yunis, located in the south of the Gaza Strip and who are struggling with hunger wait in line to receive meals distributed by charities in Khan Yunis, Gaza on December 27, 2024. (Photo: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“These preventable deaths lay bare the desperate and deteriorating conditions facing families and children across Gaza,” said the humanitarian aid organization.

UNICEF, the United Nations agency tasked with providing humanitarian aid for children, released a statement Thursday decrying the recent deaths of Gazan children, particularly those who have perished because of cold and lack of adequate shelter.

“Cold injuries, such as frostbite and hypothermia, pose grave risks to young children in tents and other makeshift shelters that are ill-equipped for freezing weather. For newborns, infants, and medically vulnerable children, the danger is even more acute,” said UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa Edouard Beigbeder.

“With temperatures expected to drop further in the coming days, it is tragically foreseeable that more children’s lives will be lost to the inhumane conditions they are enduring, which offer no protection from the cold,” he added.

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The Quds News Network reported Thursday, citing the head of pediatrics and obstetrics at Nasser Hospital in Gaza, that four Gazan newborns have died in the past few days because of low temperatures and lack of shelter.

“These preventable deaths lay bare the desperate and deteriorating conditions facing families and children across Gaza,” said Beigbeder.

One of those babies was Sila Mahmoud Al-Faseeh, a 3-week-old girl, who died Sunday “from the extreme cold” in a tent where her forcibly displaced family is sheltering on a beach in al-Mawasi, an Israeli-designated “safe zone” for displaced Palestinians that has repeatedly come under attack.

Sila’s father, Mahmoud al-Faseeh, told The Associated Press that the family attempted to keep the baby warm as the temperatures fell to 48°F (9°C)—below the fatal threshold for hypothermia—in their unsealed tent on cold ground.

“It was very cold overnight and as adults we couldn’t even take it,” al-Faseeh said. “We couldn’t stay warm.”

Over 14,500 children have reportedly been killed since October 7, 2023 as of mid-December, according to UNICEF, though the Gaza Government Media Office cites a higher figure.

The U.S. government successfully sought the retraction of a report from an organization monitoring food crises that warned of looming famine in north Gaza under what the report called Israel’s “near-total blockade,” according to Thursday reporting from The Associated Press. The move drew concern from aid groups, per AP.

In November, more than two dozen international relief groups operating in Gaza warned that humanitarian assistance entering the enclave had “fallen to an all-time low” due to Israel’s continued blockade.

The situation has also exacted a punishing psychological toll on the children of Gaza. A report from the Community Training Centre for Crisis Management released in November found that, of the more than 500 Palestinian children it surveyed in Gaza last summer, 96% of them fear imminent death, 92% are not accepting of reality, 79% suffer from nightmares, and 49% wish to die because of the war, and many more “show signs of withdrawal and severe anxiety, alongside a pervasive sense of hopelessness.”

Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
Continue ReadingUNICEF Says Deaths of More Gaza Children ‘Tragically Foreseeable’ as Israeli Assault Continues