Gaza's Tent Camps Hit by Strikes and Floods as UN Begs Israel to Let Shelter In

Israeli strikes killed five Palestinians including displaced people sheltering in tents, while the UN warns 70,000 tents were flooded and Israel continues to block emergency aid permits.

Israeli forces killed at least five Palestinians across Gaza on Wednesday, including two brothers sheltering inside a tent on al-Jalaa Street and a man filling a water tank hit by a drone strike. The attacks struck al-Sabra, al-Bureij, al-Nasr, and Sheikh Radwan — a geographic spread that underscores what Al Jazeera's correspondent described as indiscriminate targeting with no safe zone anywhere in the enclave.

The strikes arrived against a backdrop of humanitarian collapse accelerated by heavy weekend rains. At least 70,000 tents sheltering displaced Palestinians were flooded, UNICEF reported 106,000 people directly affected, and latrines overflowed into camps — creating the conditions for disease outbreaks on top of an already overwhelmed medical system. The UN's deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq made the blockage explicit: Israel controls the permits needed to bring waterproof tents into Gaza, and those permits are not being granted. Tom Fletcher, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, went further, reporting that foreign ministers supporting aid delivery have told the UN to wait for the formation of a new Israeli government before expecting progress. Fletcher called this "not an acceptable excuse" under international law. Italy announced a €5 million emergency initiative to provide immediate flooding assistance — a gesture that illustrates both the scale of international concern and the disproportion between available resources and the crisis. NGOs and local organizations on the ground say they lack the capacity to respond, not because of funding alone, but because of physical access restrictions enforced by Israel. The cumulative toll provides the structural context: 74,653 Palestinians killed since October 7, 2023, with 176,007 injured. Since the ceasefire agreement took effect on October 11, 2025, Israel has killed 1,622 Palestinians and injured 5,878 — figures that strain any definition of ceasefire. The displacement infrastructure that was supposed to keep people alive — the tents, the camps, the aid corridors — is itself under attack from both military strikes and weather, with the occupying power controlling the bottleneck for relief. What emerges is a system designed to maximize civilian exposure to harm while minimizing accountability. Military strikes destroy shelter. Weather destroys what strikes miss. The permit regime ensures replacements cannot arrive. And the political calendar — Israeli elections, government formation — provides diplomatic cover for indefinite delay. Each component reinforces the others. The question is not whether this constitutes a humanitarian crisis — that threshold was crossed years ago. The question is whether the international community's aid architecture can function at all when the occupying power holds a veto over every supply chain into the territory it is bombing.