Palestinian authorities have criticised global “indifference and inaction” after a landslide killed five displaced people sheltering in tents in the central Gaza Strip following heavy rains.
“This is a scene that should shame the conscience of humanity and reflects the extent of the complicity and abandonment to which our […] people are subjected,” the Gaza Government Media Office said in a statement on Monday.
Four children and a woman were killed and two people remain missing after a sandbank collapsed onto their tent in Deir el-Balah on Sunday. The landslide happened after heavy rains brought by the first winter storm of the year hit the besieged territory on Friday, causing widespread flooding.
Floodwaters have inundated displacement camps and weakened buildings already damaged by Israeli air raids.
Restrictions imposed by the Israeli military mean specialist search and rescue equipment is in short supply, and Gaza residents were forced to dig using their bare hands to try and reach survivors.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said the victims were living in flimsy tents, on exposed ground, with no protection from the heavy rain.
“When the embankment collapsed, those people had no chance to escape or protect themselves, and this raises difficult conditions about what people on the ground are left to endure,” he said.
About 70,000 tents were flooded when the storm hit Gaza at the weekend. According to data from Save the Children, more than half a million children are living in “critical or catastrophic” shelter conditions.
In a statement, Save the Children said, “While the so-called ceasefire announced over a year ago stipulated the entry of caravans as a more durable alternative to tents, Israeli authorities have repeatedly blocked their entry into Gaza, leaving hundreds of thousands of children exposed to another winter of hardship.”
The Government Media Office held Israel, the United States and the international community “fully and directly responsible”, citing their “absolute silence regarding the occupation’s crimes and their complicity in preventing the entry of shelter supplies, construction materials, caravans, fuel, and spare parts required to operate municipal and Civil Defence machinery and equipment”.
“We strongly condemn and denounce the state of inaction and the complete absence of the Board of Peace and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, as though this catastrophe were of no concern to them. Their complete failure to act and their flagrant abdication of the responsibilities entrusted to them raise serious questions about the very purpose of these bodies, which remain passive observers in the face of the suffering of the Palestinian people.”
More than 74,600 people have been killed since Israel’s genocidal war began on October 7, 2023, in response to a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. Since a “ceasefire” took effect in October 2025, Israel has killed more than 1,600 Palestinians.
