UNRWA: Gaza children freeze to death due to cold and lack of shelter

The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, warned that "children in the Gaza Strip are freezing to death due to the cold weather and lack of shelter, while winter supplies have been stuck for months awaiting Israeli approval to enter the Strip," in light of the ongoing Israeli genocide for more than 14 months.

In a post on the X platform on Friday evening, Lazzarini said that “children in Gaza are freezing to death due to the cold weather and lack of shelter.”

The UN official stressed that "blankets, mattresses and other winter supplies have been stuck in the area for months, awaiting (Israeli) approval to enter Gaza."

Lazzarini renewed the call for "an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and an immediate flow of urgently needed essential supplies, including winter supplies."

On Thursday, the Director General of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Munir al-Barsh, announced in a statement to Anadolu Agency that 3 Palestinian children had died in forced displacement camps within a week, as a result of the drop in temperatures.

This came a day after the death of a two-week-old Palestinian infant named "Seela Mahmoud Al-Faseeh", who was affected by the severe cold inside a displacement tent in the "Al-Mawasi" area west of Khan Yunis city in the southern Gaza Strip, according to what the Anadolu Agency correspondent reported, quoting eyewitnesses.

This is the second infant to die due to the extreme cold in the displacement tents, as Aisha Adnan Sufyan Al-Qassas died on Friday morning, also inside a tent in Al-Mawasi.

The displaced people inside the tents made of cloth and nylon suffer from harsh living conditions due to the scarcity of basic necessities of life, clothing, bedding and blankets, which worsen with the winter season.

With American support, Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza since October 7, 2023, leaving more than 153,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and the elderly, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.

Israel continues its massacres, ignoring two arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court on November 21 against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Galant, for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza.

Anatolia