Displaced Gaza newborn freezes to death and twin fights for his life as rain floods tents

Yahya Al-Batran woke up in the early hours of Sunday morning to find his wife, Noura trying to wake their newborn twin sons Jumaa and Ali as they lay together in the makeshift tent the family occupied in an encampment in the central Gaza Strip.

Intense winter cold and heavy rain across the coastal enclave in previous days had made their lives a misery but what he heard was more serious.

"She said she had been trying to wake Jumaa up, but he was not waking up, and I asked about Ali and she said, he was not walking up either," he told Reuters on Sunday. "I held up Jumaa, he was white and freezing like snow, like ice, frozen."

Jumaa, a month old, died of hypothermia, one of six Palestinians who have died of exposure and cold over recent days in Gaza, according to doctors. Ali was in critical condition on Monday in intensive care.

In the second winter of the war in Gaza, the weather has added an extra element of suffering to hundreds of thousands of people already displaced, often multiple times, while efforts to agree a ceasefire go nowhere.

The death of Jumaa al-Batran shows how severe the situation facing vulnerable families remains.

Israeli authorities say they have allowed thousands of aid trucks carrying food, water, medical equipment and shelter supplies into Gaza. International aid agencies say Israeli forces have been hampering aid deliveries, making the humanitarian crisis even worse.

Yahya al-Batran's family, from the northern town of Beit Lahiya, fled their home early in the war for al-Maghazi, an open air patch of dunes and scrubland in central Gaza which Israeli authorities decreed as a humanitarian zone.

Later on, as al-Maghazi became increasingly unsafe, they moved to another encampment in nearby Deir al-Balah city.

"Since I am an adult I may take this and endure it, but what did the young one do to deserve this?" Jumaa's mother, Noura al-Batran said, as she held embraced her son's colourful blanket to her chest. "He could not endure it, he could not endure the cold or the hunger and this hopelessness."

Around the area, dozens of tents, many already tattered from months of use, have been blown away or flooded by the strong winds and rain, leaving families struggling to repair the damage, patching torn sheets of plastic and piling up sand to hold back the water.

"The water seeped inside and on the mattresses and my children's clothes. I changed the children's clothes this morning to their underwear," said Sabreen Abu Shanab, a mother of three, whose tent was flooded.

"They were sleeping and soaked wet to their underwear. I swear. The pants and underwear (were all soaked). Everything is soaked, the blankets, the pillows, everything," added the woman.

Abu Shanab suffers from asthma and despite medication, she has not been feeling better for a month because of the cold weather and the lack of heavy blankets and clothes.

It is another aspect of the humanitarian crisis facing Gaza's 2.3 million population, caught by the relentless Israeli campaign against the remnants of Hamas and dependent on an erratic aid system increasingly vulnerable to looting as order has broken down.

Israel's campaign against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials, and turned the enclave into a wasteland of rubble and destroyed buildings.

The war was triggered by a Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The United Nations relief agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, said on Sunday that the aid is nowhere near enough and a ceasefire was desperately needed to deliver as famine loomed.

Earlier this month, Israeli and Hamas leaders expressed hopes that talks brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United States could lead to an agreement to halt the fighting and return Israeli hostages held by Hamas, potentially opening the way to a full ceasefire agreement.

But optimistic talk of a deal before the end of the year has faded and it remains unclear how near the two sides are to an agreement.

Even as the displaced suffer, Israeli troops have been battling Hamas fighters in the ruined area around the northern towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Beit Lahiya, now out of reach of emergency services cut off by the fighting.