Torrential rains swept through the Gaza Strip, flooding tens of thousands of tents housing forcibly displaced people and leaving them without any shelter, and causing injuries, local authorities announced on Saturday.
“Some 70,000 tents housing tens of thousands of displaced people were flooded on the first day” of the storm that hit the Palestinian enclave, the Hamas government’s press office reported.
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“Dozens of walls and roofs that had developed cracks collapsed, causing injuries,” and some of the injured “are in serious condition” throughout the region, the same source added.
That same morning, hundreds of families were fleeing flooded refugee camps in the central and northern parts of the Gaza Strip and in the city of Gaza.
Civil protection authorities received more than 1,500 calls for help during the night, according to a spokesperson, who told Agence France-Presse that the agency’s teams are forced to operate “without any equipment or resources.”
The emergency relief agency, part of the Hamas government apparatus, cannot “cope with the consequences on its own” of the wave of severe weather, the spokesperson added, issuing an “urgent appeal to the international community and humanitarian organizations” for assistance.
The Palestinian Authority, based in Ramallah in the West Bank, called on the international community to take immediate action, emphasizing that the war waged by Israel in the Gaza Strip has made the already catastrophic living conditions in the enclave even worse, according to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.
Mustafa Kazat, a municipal councilor in Gaza and head of the enclave’s emergency response committee, stressed that Israeli authorities are not allowing prefabricated homes to be brought into the enclave—homes that would provide shelter for people who have lost their homes— nor a sufficient number of tents.
The Palestinian enclave “urgently needs 200,000 prefabricated homes and materials to clear the rubble of collapsed houses and buildings, to reopen the main roads, and to immediately restore electricity and heating,” he emphasized, speaking to Agence France-Presse.
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Source: CNA
