At least three Palestinian infants have died in the past few hours in the Gaza Strip due to severe cold and a lack of adequate heating in their shelters, a medical official said Tuesday.
Saeed Salah, director of the Friends of the Patient Charitable Hospital in Gaza City, told Xinhua that the infants, all under two months old, arrived at the hospital suffering from hypothermia.
“Their bodies were like ice cubes,” he said, noting that the children had been living in makeshift tents in Gaza City without proper heating.
The extreme cold caused a severe drop in their blood circulation, leading to respiratory failure, heart complications, and organ dysfunction, which ultimately resulted in their deaths.
Saeed highlighted the growing humanitarian crisis, emphasizing the urgent need for adequate shelter and heating for infants and other vulnerable residents in Gaza.
“The number of deaths is rising among children living in tents made of cloth and nylon, especially as the cold weather continues,” he added.
Gaza has been experiencing a harsh cold wave in recent days, with strong winds, heavy rain, and plummeting temperatures.
The extreme weather has uprooted hundreds of tents and flooded many displacement camps, worsening the plight of thousands of families.