GAZA CITY, Palestine / ISTANBUL

Two Palestinians were killed, and several others were injured due to heavy rains and winds in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, according to medics.

Medical sources told Anadolu that the wall of a home that was damaged in past Israeli attacks fell upon a tent sheltering displaced civilians in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, killing a 30-year-old woman and injuring her family members.

Gaza Civil Defense said in a statement that a seven-year-old child lost his life after drowning in a well in the Northern Governorate.

Civil defense teams worked for several hours to retrieve the child’s body, amid efforts to save dozens of flooded tents and open drains and sewers for water, according to the statement.

Heavy rainfall and strong winds that have been pounding the enclave since last night flooded and uprooted thousands of displacement tents across Gaza, according to an Anadolu correspondent and witnesses.

Hundreds of tents for displaced people set up on the beach of Khan Younis, south of the Gaza Strip, were also flooded by rising sea waves caused by the low-pressure weather system.

Gaza has been struggling to survive harsh weather in recent months, as two previous weather depressions caused the deaths of 17 Palestinians, including four children, due to the collapse of already damaged buildings in Israeli bombardment and the flooding and uprooting of tens of thousands of displacement tents.

Sami Asaliya, a Palestinian from Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, appealed for allowing mobile homes into Israel-blockaded Gaza Strip.

“We need mobile homes,” Asaliya told Anadolu. “The tents don’t protect us from rain and winds; they have been flooded several times.”

Nearby, a young man is trying with his trembling hands to replace some torn fabric as a barrier before the rainwater, desperately seeking a little warmth and protection inside the dilapidated tents.

Hadiya Atiya Farajallah, an elderly woman, stands helplessly in front of her waterlogged tent, watching as the rain floods everything around her, overwhelmed by a profound sense of powerlessness in the face of the harsh realities of life in the refugee camp.

“I lost five of my children, my tent was flooded twice, and my husband is an elderly man who cannot do anything,” she told Anadolu.

Weather conditions pose great danger to displaced Palestinians who are living in worn-out tents or severely damaged high-risk buildings, which have been under repeated Israeli strikes since October 2023.

The Israeli army has killed more than 71,200 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 171,200 others since October 2023 in Gaza in a brutal assault that also left the enclave in ruins.