Another Palestinian baby freezes to death from cold weather in Gaza

Another baby has died after freezing to death in Gaza. Jumaa Al-Batran was only 20 days old when he died. His father says he had no tarpaulin for a tent and used the few blankets the family owned to make a makeshift shelter which wasn't waterproof. Jumaa's twin brother, Ali, is also struggling to survive in Gaza's winter cold and has been admitted to intensive care. 2 million of Gaza's 2.3 million population have been forcibly displaced from their homes and forced to live in tents without adequate food, water, shelter or medical facilities.

A 20-day-old baby died on Sunday due to severe cold and a lack of heating in refugee tents in the central Gaza Strip, the Health Ministry said, Anadolu news agency reported.

The infant, Jumaa al-Batran, “passed away due to the intense cold” in Deir al-Balah city, the ministry explained in a statement.

“His twin brother remains in critical care in the neonatal intensive care unit at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza,” it added.

The new fatality brings the number of babies who froze to death in Gaza to five in the past week, according to local health authorities.

Israel then launched an air and land offensive that has killed more than 45,500 people, mostly civilians, according to authorities in the Gaza Strip. Israel has indiscriminately targeted women and children and killed thousands of doctors, journalists, academics and aid workers. Gazans have been deliberately starved, with no food or medicine being allowed to enter the enclave.

The campaign has displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins, having bombed much of Gaza’s infrastructure – hospitals, water sources, mosques, churches and residential areas. Thousands of the dead still remain under the rubble. Israel has ignored ICJ, ICC and UN rulings.

READ: Palestinian people are facing ‘most brutal’ catastrophe in modern times

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.