Spanish
The Gaza Civil Defense emergency service estimated that 17 buildings have completely collapsed in Gaza as of this Wednesday due to the rains that have lashed the enclave in recent days, and more than 90 have suffered partial collapses and put the population at risk.
"Since the start of the storms, more than 17 residential buildings have completely collapsed. More than 90 residential buildings have suffered serious partial collapses, posing a direct threat to the lives of thousands of citizens," says the statement from the Civil Defense spokesman, Mahmud Basal.
Civil Defense assures that all the tent camps of displaced Gazans have been flooded or damaged by the rains and winds. "This has caused the destruction of clothes, mattresses and blankets of the citizens," the text continues, denouncing that the rains have worsened the already existing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
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In total, Civil Defense teams have received more than 5,000 emergency calls since the beginning of the bad weather with storm Byron last Wednesday, which after the weekend gave way to days of low temperatures and intermittent rain. Amnesty International said that Israel aggravated this situation in a statement this Wednesday by restricting access to critical resources to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and repair the destroyed structures. "These are the foreseeable consequences of the genocide that Israel is committing and of its deliberate policy of blocking the entry of materials to build shelters and repair homes for the displaced," he states. 81% of all existing structures in Gaza have been destroyed by Israeli bombings during their offensive (and, despite the ceasefire, the Army continues to demolish buildings in the area of the Strip that remains under its control). Amnesty International reports that 58% of the Gaza Strip remains areas of prohibited access to the population as they are under Israeli military control, so Gazans remain concentrated in a minority area of Gaza, mostly displaced in camps under poor humanitarian conditions. "The devastation caused by the torrential rains in the occupied Gaza Strip, which led to recent flooding of thousands of tents and makeshift shelters and caused buildings to collapse, was exacerbated by the ongoing restrictions imposed by Israel on the entry of essential supplies to repair vital infrastructure," the statement warns. The organization collects the testimony of Shadi Hannouna, who lost his two brothers on December 12 when the remains of a house collapsed on the tent where the two young men, aged 24 and 18, were sleeping. "Around 5:00 on Friday, a nearby house, already damaged, collapsed into the store... the worst part is that we no longer knew where to go afterwards, there is no future for us, no horizon, winter is just beginning and we have lost my two brothers like this," he laments. The Gaza Ministry of Health has so far reported 11 deaths due to the rains and cold in Gaza. Ten died crushed by collapses and one, a two-week-old baby, from hypothermia.
