Israel attacks Gaza as heavy rain worsens misery of displaced Palestinians

CAIRO: At least 10 Palestinians, including four children, were killed in two attacks by Israeli forces in the central Gaza Strip on September 23, medics said, while heavy rains flooded tent camps of displaced residents.

The attack on Gaza, which has now lasted almost a year, continued even as international attention focused on the conflict between Hezbollah fighters and Israel in Lebanon and northern Israel.

Palestinian health officials said at least five Palestinians were killed at a school for displaced Palestinians in Nuseirat, one of the eight historic refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military said it attacked a Hamas command center in a building that formerly served as a school.

Later on September 23, an Israeli airstrike on a house in the town of Deir Al-Balah, where a million people had sought shelter, killed a woman and four children, medics said. The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the incident.

Hamas' armed wing said on September 23 that its fighters managed to lure a convoy of Israeli vehicles into a “well-prepared ambush” on the Israeli forces' supply line east of the city of Rafah and attacked them with anti-tank missiles and pre-planted explosive devices. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Even more misery

Heavy rains overnight have caused further problems for displaced people in the Gaza Strip, as the downpours flooded tents, washing some away and waking families.

Some placed buckets of water on the ground to protect the mats from leaks and dug trenches to divert water away from their tents. The prices of new tents and plastic sheeting to prevent leaks skyrocketed.

Ahmed Al-Burai, 30, said people had built their tents out of used flour sacks, worn-out clothes and nylon bags. When it rained, water and wind blew away many tents and flooded others.

“Everything drowned, the blankets, the food and the people, and all this after just a few hours of rain,” he told Reuters by phone from Al-Mawasi, a humanitarian zone in the southern Gaza Strip.

“Most of the displaced people cannot afford the new prices of tents and plastic sheeting. Just two days ago, the price of plastic sheeting was NIS 100 to NIS 200 (S$34 to NIS 68), and today it has risen to NIS 700 to NIS 800 due to the greed of traders.”

To help people survive the coming winter, more shelter and relief supplies are needed, said the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNRWA).

“At the beginning of autumn, plastic and fabric are no longer enough to protect people from rain and cold,” the aid organization posted on X.

Most of Gaza's 2.3 million residents were displaced in the nearly year-long war, when Israeli air and artillery strikes reduced large parts of the Palestinian enclave to rubble. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 41,300 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli attacks.

The war, the deadliest clash in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, began on October 7 when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage, according to Israeli sources. REUTERS