Fire kills mother, child in Gaza shelter

GAZA CITY, Palestine / ISTANBUL

A Palestinian mother and her child were killed and a third person was injured Thursday after a fire broke out in a tent sheltering displaced families in Gaza City, Civil Defense said.

The organization said in a statement that its teams recovered two bodies and evacuated an injured person after the fire in Al-Yarmouk shelter in Al-Daraj neighborhood in central Gaza City.

The cause of the fire was not yet clear.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are living in tents and temporary shelters amid a severe lack of safe shelter supplies, after Israel’s two-year war destroyed entire residential areas and forced mass displacement.

Most tents lack basic safety measures, making them vulnerable to fires, especially as people rely on primitive means for heating and cooking due to power outages and severe fuel shortages.

The Israeli army has killed more than 71,000 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 171,000 others in Gaza since October 2023.