A boy less than three weeks old was among the latest to succumb to winter weather, Gazan officials said. Families displaced by Israel’s attacks have little more than tents and tarps to protect them.
At least five babies have died from the cold in Gaza in the past week, health authorities there say, as winter worsens the toll on a population traumatized by 15 months of conflict.
Jumaa al-Batran, less than three weeks old, died in intensive care on Sunday after he and his twin brother, Ali, were rushed to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza, the territory’s health ministry said.
The twins and their parents had been living in a tent in a camp for displaced people in the city of Deir al Balah. “I woke up and found my son stiff like a block of wood,” Nora al-Batran, their mother, said in video published by Anadolu, a Turkish news agency. “I tried to shake him awake, but there was nothing. The child was stiff, blue, dark blue in color from the cold.”
Ali, who like his brother was born premature, was in critical condition and on a ventilator in the hospital’s intensive care unit because of the effects of hypothermia, according to Dr. Wisam Shaltout, head of the hospital’s neonatal unit. “Conditions inside tents in this cold weather make it next to impossible for babies like Ali and his brother to survive,” he said in a phone interview.
Dr. Shaltout said an earlier report from the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, Wafa, that Ali had died was inaccurate. But he added that even if Ali recovered, there could be long-lasting damage to his brain or other organs.
“What breaks my heart is that if Ali survives this, we will give him back to his parents who will take him back to the cold tent that almost killed him and that killed his twin brother,” Dr. Shaltout said.
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