'People were screaming': Deadly landslide a warning for winter in Gaza

By the time Ayman Ayyad heard the screams, darkness had fallen over the displacement camp in Deir al Balah, central Gaza.

It was about an hour after evening prayers when cries rose from tents nearby. Mr Ayyad, a 27-year-old displaced Palestinian, ran towards the sound with other residents.

In the darkness and bitter cold, they discovered a large mound of rain-soaked sand had collapsed on to several tents. “Some children were buried in the sand, and people were screaming,” he told The National.

Mr Ayyad and other young men began digging, trying to free those trapped, before civil defence crews arrived. Children and women were pulled from beneath the sand and the wreckage of their shelters.

Five people, including three children, were killed in the collapse, according to Palestinian Civil Defence officials.

“One of the most difficult things I have ever witnessed was seeing people buried alive,” Mr Ayyad said. They had suffocated beneath the sand.

For Gaza families already displaced by war, the collapse turned a place of refuge into another source of danger.

The tents had previously flooded during a storm, and their occupants had repaired them with whatever materials they could find, said civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal.

The families had believed the worst weather had passed. Instead, it appears that rainwater destabilised the sand mound behind the tents, causing it to give way without warning.

The civil defence workers searched for more than two hours beneath the sand and among the remains of the tents, Mr Bassal said. They rescued more than 10 injured people.

Show caption: Palestinians gather at the site of the deadly sand bank coll…

Mr Bassal said the shortage of heavy rescue equipment could have contributed to the loss of life, and blamed Israeli restrictions on essential machinery entering Gaza.

The collapse followed days of heavy rain and strong winds that swept across the Gaza Strip, flooding displacement camps and damaging structures already weakened by bombardment.

Gaza authorities said more than 70,000 tents sheltering displaced families were flooded across the territory. The water rose about a metre high in some camps. Dozens of walls and buildings also collapsed. The cost of the damage is estimated at $3 million by officials.

Ismail Al Thawabta, the head of the Gaza government's media office, told The National that civil defence teams received more than 2,100 distress calls during the storm but could only respond to 218 because of limited personnel and equipment.

The scale of the flooding was visible far beyond Deir Al Balah. In Jabalia Al Balad, in northern Gaza, 41-year-old Mahmmed Al Zein said rainwater inundated the tent where he lives with his family of eight, including his young children.

“Our tents were flooded, and the mattresses, food and other belongings we had were soaked by the rain,” he said. “We were left submerged in rainwater and mud, and no one paid any attention to us.”

Mr Al Zein’s family lives near the “yellow line” that marks out Israeli-occupied territory. He said they had nowhere else to go. The camp lacks adequate drainage and other basic infrastructure, leaving its residents especially vulnerable in severe weather.

Although the family tried to dry their clothes and bedding, the rain soaked their few remaining possessions. For months, Mr Al Zein said, displaced residents had appealed for strong tents and tarpaulins but had received no meaningful assistance.

The storm has deepened concerns about the ability of Gaza’s displaced population to survive the winter. Families living in makeshift shelters face cold temperatures and more flooding and collapses of nearby buildings or unstable ground. Emergency crews say they do not have the resources to respond to the volume of calls for help.

Mr Al Thawabta called for the delivery of tents, tarpaulins and rescue equipment. Mr Bassal said the Deir Al Balah deaths should serve as another warning about the conditions facing displaced families.

For Mr Ayyad, the disaster added another harrowing memory to years marked by death and destruction. The sight that remained with him was not only of the collapsed tents and bodies recovered from beneath them. It was the children, trapped in the cold and darkness, trying to dig themselves free.

“What I saw was among the hardest scenes I have ever endured,” he said