Nine-month-old baby dies of cold in Gaza

A nine-month-old baby died of hypothermia on Thursday, his father and a doctor told AFP, after days of harsh weather and flooding in the Gaza Strip that displaced thousands of Palestinians living in tents. The doctor, who saw the child and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that nine-month-old Kinan Ahmed Raqiq "died from hypothermia inside his family's displacement tent" in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip. Ahmed Raqiq, told AFP that his son Kinan died of cold during the night in their tent in southern Gaza. "I woke up only to see his skin had turned blue so I rushed him to Nasser hospital, but he had already died from hypothermia and frozen to death," he said. "I am in complete shock. I found myself holding my son wrapped in burial shroud," he said outside the hospital, dried tears on his face as he held his son wrapped in a white sheet. Heavy rain last week flooded tens of thousands of people's tents in Gaza, where virtually the whole population has been displaced at least once by three years of Israeli strikes in response to the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas. Five people including three children died the day after the flooding when a sandy embankment collapsed onto their tents. - Rain and cold - Since then, hundreds of displaced families have been seen fleeing camps in parts of Gaza City and central and northern areas of the territory after they were inundated by rainwater. James Elder, spokesman on Gaza for the UN children's agency, UNICEF, warned that the flooding was just the beginning of the cold season. "It's very important to know how bad things are in Gaza. It's not yet winter," Elder said. "We're weeks away from winter, so we are getting unprecedented rain and cold." The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that as of November 8, 26,000 households were affected by storms. Around 65 percent of Gaza's people are still living displaced in tents or other temporary shelter, OCHA said. Israel and Hamas declared a ceasefire on October 10, 2025 but Israel has kept striking the territory, vowing to kill anyone involved in the October 7 attack, the deadliest in Israel's history. In rare criticism, President Donald Trump's Board of Peace said this week that Israel -- which tightly controls entry into Gaza -- had not done enough in anticipation of the cold weather and that it needed urgently to let in more supplies. Caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a response to the Board of Peace, said that Israel had allowed in supplies including 91,000 tents and that "Hamas alone is responsible for the suffering of the people of Gaza". "Hamas must not be allowed to exploit humanitarian supplies and equipment to rebuild its terror capabilities," Netanyahu said. str-lba/sct/ser