Babies die of hypothermia in Gaza as Israel blocks shelters
Rights and Accountability 16 January 2026
Families living in makeshift tents amid the rubble light fires for warmth during harsh winter weather in Jabaliya, northern Gaza, 12 January.
APA imagesThe following is from the news roundup during the 15 January livestream. Watch the entire episode here.
Israel continues to kill and injure Palestinians across the Gaza Strip while the Israeli blockade remains firmly in place, despite nearly 100 days since the so-called ceasefire was agreed upon in October 2025.
Israeli attacks killed at least 10 Palestinians on Thursday, including a child and a senior official of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas political party.
Al Jazeera reported that at least one Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers west of Rafah and another was killed in an Israeli attack on a police post southwest of Gaza City.
Two more Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air attack on the al-Khatib family home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, the network added.
On Wednesday, 14 January, the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza announced that at least 450 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,200 have been injured since the October agreement.
Also on Wednesday, Hatem Abu Saleh, a nurse was killed by Israeli occupation forces in Khan Younis.
Reporter Tamer Qashta recorded footage of his family, colleagues and loved ones grieving over his body, which was taken to the Nasser Medical Complex, where he was a member of the nursing staff.
Dr. Mohammad Sakr, the director of the nursing department where Abu Saleh worked, told the Turkish broadcaster TRT that Abu Saleh was the target of more than one assassination attempt and had sustained injuries while on duty inside the hospital complex. He had taken a leave from work to help his family prepare for his son’s wedding, but “the occupation’s bullets were faster than his chance to attend his son’s wedding.”
On Tuesday, 13 January, two Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in Rafah.The day before, an Israeli quadcopter drone shot and killed three Palestinians in Khan Younis, identified by the local Wafa news agency as Wissam Abdullah Salem al-Amour, Mahmoud Subhi Breika and Atef Samir al-Bayouk.
The attacks came after Israeli army forces carried out air strikes and shelling across several parts of the enclave on Monday, Al Jazeera noted.
Fares Afanah, the director of Emergency and Medical Services in Gaza, said this week that Israel continues to violate the ceasefire every single day, leaving civilians under constant fire across Gaza.
He reported that four Palestinians were killed on Sunday, 11 January, in Gaza City and other areas, with multiple injuries reported, and that a civilian was shot in the back in Jabaliya refugee camp.“The Israeli occupation is still committing massacres against our Palestinian people,” Afanah stated.
James Elder, spokesperson of the UN children’s fund UNICEF, who is in Gaza, stated this week that the agency has recorded reports of at least 100 children killed by Israeli attacks and hundreds more wounded during the so-called ceasefire.
In a video statement, Elder meets with a hospitalized child who says he was collecting firewood and plastic when an Israeli missile struck the area he was in, sending a 6mm-thick piece of shrapnel into his eye.
Deaths from collapsing buildings and hypothermia
Along with deaths and injuries from bombings, drone strikes and missile attacks, Israel continues to deprive Palestinians of the right to basic shelter and safe housing, while it weaponizes the winter weather as another instrument of death and misery.
Journalist Wissam Shabat filmed the effect of the recent high winds on tent shelters along the beach on Tuesday.The United Nations’ humanitarian office stated on Tuesday that hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters were blown away or heavily damaged in brutal wind and rainstorms over the last few days, and that its office has received reports of cases of hypothermia, mainly among children, and people killed as buildings collapse.
Reporter Saed Hasballah filmed a building collapsing in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City on Wednesday evening. The home fell apart, as he says, “due to the poor condition of the infrastructure damaged by the war, as well as the heavy rain and strong winds that hit the Gaza Strip.”
Israel has refused to allow in necessary materials for infrastructure repairs and maintenance, as well as heavy equipment to clear the vast piles of rubble, and pre-fabricated caravans and other shelter materials that remain stockpiled on the other side of the Gaza crossings.
On 13 January, the Palestinian Civil Defense reported that at least three people, including a 15-year-old girl, were killed when a building collapsed in Gaza City.
Another person was killed in a separate collapse in the city on the same day.
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza reported that at least one Palestinian died when a building toppled on 14 January, bringing the number of deaths from such incidents to 25 since the beginning of the winter season.
Infants die from cold
Deaths from hypothermia were also reported across Gaza this week, due to Israel’s defiance of its obligations to allow in caravans and shelter materials.
A one-week old infant named Mahmoud Al-Aqra died and was brought to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah on 10 January.
Reporter Samer Alboji filmed the baby’s older brother, who spoke with harrowing grief about how they called the ambulance after feeling the baby’s cold leg. The boy says, “we don’t have anything but blankets. We wrapped him with the blankets so he could keep warm. We don’t have enough blankets or anything, the covers we had were just shawls. And this is what happened to him.”A one-year old baby, also in Deir al-Balah, died in his displaced family’s tent on Tuesday, according to medical sources at the hospital. Two other children had died on Monday night due to the freezing conditions and inadequate shelter, Al Jazeera reported.
The Gaza government media office stated on 13 January that since the start of the genocide, at least 24 Palestinians have died from extreme cold in the forced displacement camps, 21 of whom were children.
Health crises and fuel shortages
Meanwhile, because of Israel’s ongoing blockade and more than two years of bombings to most of the infrastructure, municipal workers are warning that destroyed or degraded sewage and water systems across Gaza could create unprecedented health and environmental crises.
Our contributor Asem Alnabih, reporting beside a reservoir for Al-Araby TV on 13 January, said, “This is one of the consequences of a long-term, catastrophic genocidal war. The basin was originally designed to collect rainwater and recharge the groundwater. Today, it is contaminated with vast amounts of sewage, posing a grave threat to Gaza City’s groundwater and creating an environmental crisis that may take years or perhaps decades to resolve.”
Asem is not only a writer for The Electronic Intifada and a reporter with Al-Araby TV in Gaza, but he is also the spokesperson for the Gaza municipality.The Gaza government media office stated on 9 January that as the Israeli government continues to renege on its obligations under the October agreement, the Gaza Strip is “facing a slow-motion genocide.”
According to the media office, Israel has only allowed in 43 percent of the minimum agreed-upon quantities of humanitarian aid, which has led to a “continued severe shortage of food, medicine, water and fuel, and has deepened the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.”
Even the food items that Israel allows to enter, the media office added, “are mostly of low nutritional value, while the occupation prevents the entry of nutritious and essential food items, confirming that the occupation is deliberately pursuing a systematic policy of starvation and deprivation.”Furthermore, the media office said that fuel shipments to the Gaza Strip during the same period have averaged only about five trucks per day out of the 50 trucks allocated according to the agreement.
This represents a compliance rate of approximately 11 percent, the media office says, “leaving hospitals, bakeries and water and sanitation facilities in a state of near-paralysis and exacerbating the suffering of the civilian population.”
Evictions, killings in West Bank
Turning to the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces stormed the Batn al-Hawa neighborhood of Silwan, in East Jerusalem on Wednesday, assaulting and beating residents, firing sound bombs and tear gas, causing damage to people’s personal belongings inside their homes and detaining at least one man, according to the Wafa news agency.
The attacks follow recent forced expulsions of Palestinian families from their homes in Silwan, and the imminent expulsion of approximately 24 more families, part of a broader effort to expel some 2,200 Palestinians from Silwan, Middle East Eye reported.
As we recently reported, Israeli forces expelled families from their homes in Silwan and turned the building over to an extremist Jewish Israeli settler organization.
Also in East Jerusalem, Israeli forces ordered the month-long closure of a health clinic in the Old City, and threatened to cut water and electricity if it re-opens and provides care for patients.
The al-Zawiya clinic, which is the oldest clinic run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, has, since 1949, provided essential services including pediatric and maternal care. It provides services for 30,000 people.
The clinic offers family planning services, mental health care, treatment for chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes, an emergency department, and dental care, according to the Wafa news agency, which notes that family planning, childhood vaccinations, and mental health services are available to both refugees and non-refugees.These moves are part of a wide escalation of attacks by Israel on the UN agency for Palestine refugees and the people it serves.
Israeli forces raided a Palestinian wedding in Jerusalem on 9 January, firing live ammunition and stun grenades at attendees.
Several men were arrested, including the groom, with footage showing soldiers inside the hall and security forces throwing stun grenades as guests were forced outside, Al Jazeera reported.In the southern occupied West Bank, Israeli forces shot a 58-year old man, Shaker Falah Al-Jaabari, on 10 January as he was inside his vehicle in the eastern part of the city of Hebron.
Al-Jaabari died from his wounds on Sunday morning, according to reports.
The Israeli army said its forces opened fire at a vehicle that accelerated towards soldiers; however, in a later statement, the military acknowledged that an initial review found no evidence that the incident was an intentional attack.
Israeli authorities confiscated his body following the shooting, the Wafa news agency reported. The Palestine Red Crescent Society told Al Jazeera that its crew was prevented from reaching the man.
The killing came as Israeli forces besieged a house in the Old City of Nablus on Sunday, with undercover units infiltrating neighborhoods before military vehicles stormed the city from multiple directions, Al Jazeera noted.
Two Palestinians were arrested as troops deployed across several areas and live gunfire echoed through the eastern market, according to Palestinian security sources cited by Wafa news agency.
Highlighting resilience
Finally, as we always do, we wanted to highlight people expressing joy, determination and resilience across Gaza and around the world.
In the Sawarha displacement camp in central Gaza, an animal therapy expert brought two rescued puppies to play with children.
The Sameer Project, a local mutual aid group which supports the camp and its residents, says, “Animals bring happiness and purpose, they do not judge, they love unconditionally. This is so important particularly at our medical camps where we rehabilitate those with injuries and care for the sick. Our two new puppies will bring happiness amidst the pain.”- Log in to post comments
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