Gaza's Fourth Wartime Winter: Collapsed Infrastructure Turns Rain Into Mass Casualty Event

A sandbank collapse killed four people in Deir el-Balah as 1.4 million Gazans shelter in tents with no drainage, no excavation equipment, and no construction materials allowed in.

A sandbank collapsed onto displacement tents at the Ard al-Ribat camp in Deir el-Balah on Sunday evening, killing three children and a pregnant woman. The dead include eight-year-old Salah al-Nabhan, his six-year-old sister Maryam, and their mother Tahrir, 36, who was five months pregnant. Four-year-old Habiba al-Zein was also killed; her mother and brother remain in intensive care. The father, Ahmed al-Nabhan, recently released from Israeli detention, is the family's sole survivor.

Residents dug through sand with bare hands and searched by phone flashlight after dark. No ambulances were readily available. A nurse, Shaima al-Daour, 22, attempted to resuscitate a child pulled from the rubble but could not save him due to internal bleeding. She called on bystanders for any transport — a tuk-tuk, a cart — to move a 15-year-old boy with a weak pulse to a hospital. The storm that began November 6 has directly affected 106,000 people, according to UNICEF. More than 26,000 households reported damage to shelters or belongings by November 8, per OCHA. The UN estimates 1.4 million people — 65 percent of Gaza's population — were living in tents or makeshift shelters when the storms hit. This is the fourth winter since Israel's war on Gaza began in October 2023. Gaza's drainage networks have been severely damaged by Israeli strikes. Roads and access routes remain in poor condition. Municipalities lack equipment to remove accumulated rainwater or respond to emergencies. The combination of destroyed infrastructure and denied construction materials converts ordinary rainfall into a lethal event for a population with no ability to relocate or rebuild. Gaza's Government Media Office described the collapse as a humanitarian disaster and held Israel, the US administration, and the international community responsible. It cited the blocking of proper shelters, construction materials, mobile homes, fuel, and spare parts as direct factors in the deaths. The media office also criticized the Board of Peace and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza for failing to act, questioning the purpose of these bodies. The Board of Peace said it had urged Israel to allow essential supplies such as temporary shelters and drainage equipment to enter the enclave. Aid organizations have repeatedly called for the entry of shelter materials and infrastructure repair equipment. The blockade on construction materials means that even minimal protective measures — reinforced embankments, drainage channels, weatherproofed shelters — cannot be implemented by the population or aid agencies. The structural picture is stark: a population forcibly concentrated into displacement camps on unstable ground, denied the materials to protect themselves, with destroyed municipal infrastructure unable to manage rainwater. Each winter compounds the prior year's damage. The deaths at Ard al-Ribat are not a natural disaster — they are the predictable consequence of a system designed to deny resilience to a captive population.