Key facts
- Medics said a woman and three children, aged 8, 6 and 4, were killed when the embankment collapsed.
- Six other people were injured in the collapse south of Deir al-Balah, according to medics.
- Local authorities said at least 70,000 tents were flooded in the first hours after rain began on Saturday.
- The UN humanitarian office said partners received appeals from more than 26,000 households reporting shelter damage.
- Witness Sohaib Abu Darbali told Reuters three tents were covered completely and the collapse sounded like an explosion.
- Gaza's civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said tents cannot protect people from rain or heat and called for reconstruction.
Torrential rain in Gaza caused a sand embankment to collapse onto tents late on Sunday, killing a woman and three small children, Reuters reported on November 9. Medics said the rain washed away a rocky sand bank next to a camp for displaced families south of Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. A woman and two of her children, aged 8 and 6, were killed, along with a fourth child aged 4; six others were injured.
Video circulated on social media, which Reuters said it could not immediately verify, showed residents using hammers to break large sandy rocks and shovels to remove sand before bodies wrapped in blankets and fabric sheeting, stained with blood, were pulled out. Sohaib Abu Darbali, a witness, told Reuters the collapse sounded like an explosion and that three tents were covered completely. "People were under the rubble and we couldn't see them," he said.
Amal Al-Zein, 35, a relative of the victims, said: "Whoever did not die from bombs and missiles is dying from buildings collapsing on them, from the collapse of sand and mountains on them."
Local authorities said at least 70,000 tents had been flooded in the first hours after heavy rain began on Saturday. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said humanitarian partners had received appeals from more than 26,000 households reporting damage to shelters or belongings after weekend rainstorms.
Most of Gaza's 2 million population lives in tent encampments or the ruins of bombed-out buildings, with reconstruction yet to begin following Israel's two-year military assault, launched after the 2023 Hamas attacks on southern Israel. A US-brokered ceasefire last year called for eventual reconstruction, but negotiators have failed to agree terms for Hamas to disarm or for Israel to withdraw troops, which control about two-thirds of the territory. Israel says no reconstruction can happen before Hamas is disarmed.