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In Northern Gaza, Buildings Weakened by Airstrikes Are Collapsing on Families Seeking Shelter from Cold and Rain
“We are trapped in this broken house knowing it could collapse on top of us, but where can we go?”
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Every day, journalist Hossam Shabat documents new horrors the Israeli military is wreaking on northern Gaza in a concentrated campaign of extermination and ethnic cleansing. In a recent post on X he wrote, “They have killed everyone in northern Gaza. The journalist, the paramedic, the doctor, the civil defense worker.”
In his second dispatch for Drop Site News, Hossam writes about the struggle of displaced families pouring into Gaza City from besieged town in the the north to find any shelter, including an increasing trend of people living in severely damaged homes as a last resort, only for them to collapse on top of them.
Hossam is one of the few journalists who have never left northern Gaza since Israel’s genocidal assault began. He has not seen his family, who fled to the south, in over a year.
—Sharif Abdel Kouddous, journalist and MENA editor
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Story by Hossam Shabat
GAZA CITY – The Abu al-Omrin family chose to stay in their home after it was bombed and severely damaged in a series of Israeli airstrikes on the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City in May. The structure was badly damaged and partially caved in, yet with nowhere else to go, they felt they had no choice but to remain living in it. On September 23, the structure finally gave way and collapsed on top of them, killing or burying alive 10 members of the family, including four children. A teenager and a young child were the only survivors.
The situation in northern Gaza is beyond catastrophic now. The Israeli military has destroyed nearly all of the homes and shelters in the area in a concentrated campaign of ethnic cleansing. Displaced families are forced to seek refuge in UN schools only to be bombed and attacked there. Just last week, the Israeli military forced thousands of Palestinians to flee the Abu Tamam school complex in Beit Lahia and sent them on a death march southward.
With no place to go and with the onset of winter cold and rain, displaced families are increasingly seeking refuge in severely damaged buildings and bombed out homes in a desperate bid for shelter, only for the structures to eventually collapse on them, turning homes into mass graves of concrete rubble.
The Abu al-Omrin family was just one stark example. “When the walls of the house collapsed on us, the sound of the children's screams haunted us,” said the 18-year-old survivor. “We couldn’t save anyone because everything was piled on top of us.” They chose to live under an unstable roof and cracked walls, he said, because there was no safer alternative.
This phenomenon has become so widespread, with the harsher winter weather causing more building collapses, that it recently prompted the Civil Defense authority to issue a statement warning people to stay away from unsafe structures.
Yet families, many of them displaced from the Jabaliya refugee camp, have nevertheless resorted to living in broken buildings in the Burj Al-Muhandeseen area or on al-Wehda street in Gaza City. These structures are ticking time bombs on the verge of collapse.
“We are trapped in this broken house knowing it could collapse on top of us, but where can we go?” said 60-year-old Om Mohammed, who has taken shelter in a crumbling building in Gaza City. “The rain is attacking us, the cold weather is killing our children and we have no choice.”
Since Israel launched an extermination campaign in North Gaza a little over two months ago, over 4,000 Palestinians have been killed or are missing and another 12,000 wounded. Troops have surrounded Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and the Jabaliya refugee camp, allowing in almost no humanitarian aid and ordering tens of thousands to flee. At least 130,000 have been forcibly displaced to Gaza City, according to the UN. Since October 6, the population of Gaza City has grown from around 250,000 who remained at the end of September to around 380,000 people, the UN says. The real number is probably much higher.
Now, thousands are just sleeping in the streets, out in the open, without even the most basic form of shelter. They clear pebbles from patches of sandy road to bed for the night. Some hole up inside the charred shells of destroyed cars, others under shredded tarps on inside broken storefronts. There are no blankets or bedding, no toilets, no water. Nothing. Those who are in shelters are cramped inside 50 to a room, shivering from the cold. Disease is everywhere.
People scavenge pieces of nylon and torn fabric to build makeshift tents. Then the winter winds come and blow them away or the rainwaters flood inside. All of this as a growing famine ravages their bodies and the Israeli airstrikes and shelling continue every day, relentless.
Families that have lost everything are being wrenched between destroyed shelters, homes on the verge of collapse, and the streets, living at the mercy of the sky with showers of rain and bombs and bullets falling down upon them.
Translation by Zahra Sulaiman.
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