Source : NEW INDIAN EXPRESS NEWS
Many of the mattresses and blankets have since been looted or destroyed by the weather and rodents, she said.
The International Rescue Committee is struggling to bring in children’s winter clothing because there “are a lot of approvals to get from relevant authorities,” said Dionne Wong, the organization’s deputy director of programs for the occupied Palestinian territories.
“The ability for Palestinians to prepare for winter is essentially very limited,” Wong said.
The Israeli government agency responsible for coordinating aid shipments into Gaza said in a statement that Israel has worked for months with international organizations to prepare Gaza for the winter, including facilitating the shipment of heaters, warm clothing, tents and blankets into the territory.
More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry’s count doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, where the militant group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in Gaza.
Negotiators say Israel and Hamas are inching toward a ceasefire deal, which would include a surge in aid into the territory.
For now, the winter clothing for sale in Gaza’s markets is far too expensive for most people to afford, residents and aid workers said.
Reda Abu Zarada, 50, who was displaced from northern Gaza with her family, said the adults sleep with the children in their arms to keep them warm inside their tent.
“Rats walk on us at night because we don’t have doors and tents are torn. The blankets don’t keep us warm. We feel frost coming out from the ground. We wake up freezing in the morning,” she said. “I’m scared of waking up one day to find one of the children frozen to death.”
On Thursday night, she fought through knee pain exacerbated by cold weather to fry zucchini over a fire made of paper and cardboard scraps outside their tent. She hoped the small meal would warm the children before bed.
Omar Shabet, who is displaced from Gaza City and staying with his three children, feared that lighting a fire outside his tent would make his family a target for Israeli warplanes.
“We go inside our tents after sunset and don’t go out because it is very cold and it gets colder by midnight,” he said. “My 7-year-old daughter almost cries at night because of how cold she is.”
SOURCE :- NEW INDIAN EXPRESS
