Three infants freeze to death in Gaza amid Israeli blockade

Doctors reported on Wednesday that a three-week-old girl froze to death overnight as temperatures plummeted amid a wet winter across the war-battered Palestinian enclave.

The baby’s tent was not sealed against the wind and the ground was cold, the doctors said.

On Thursday, another baby, Sila Mahmoud al-Faseeh, was found unresponsive. By the time doctors reached her, her lungs had deteriorated and she was declared dead from hypothermia.

“In the morning, when her mother was going to breastfeed her again, we found her blue, with blood coming from her mouth due to the cold,” her father said in a video shared online, holding her in a white shroud with her purple lips visible against her pale face.

“She had bitten her tongue and was frozen.”

The baby “froze to death from the extreme cold” in al-Mawasi, wrote Dr Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health, on X.

In another post, he described the tents in Gaza as “fridges of death”, citing the deaths of two other babies due to the bitter cold.

According to Ahmed al-Farra, head of paediatrics and obstetrics at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the infants were a three-day-old and a one-month-old baby.

The deaths underline the dire conditions in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are packed into derelict makeshift tents, fleeing Israeli shelling in different parts of the strip.

The Israeli military has occupied and besieged Gaza since October 2023, blocking nearly all necessary life-saving supplies – including electricity, clean water, fuel, food, medicine and tents – from reaching civilians.

Israeli forces have killed at least 45,300 Palestinians in Gaza since 7 October last year, according to the latest figures from the Palestinian health ministry. The majority of those killed are women and children.

Dozens more have died due to the harsh conditions imposed by the Israeli army, including starvation, lack of medical care and hypothermia.

On Tuesday, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, issued a damning statement, revealing that a child is killed in Gaza every hour amid the relentless Israeli assault.

“They are not just numbers; they are lives lost in a short time without any justification,” the agency stated, highlighting the devastating toll of Israel’s actions.

In a post on X, the agency emphasised the harrowing plight of Gaza’s children, many of whom are physically and emotionally scarred. Those who survive endure the trauma of displacement, are deprived of education and are left scavenging for food among the ruins of their homes.

UNRWA revealed that at least 14,500 children have been killed during the conflict, calling for an immediate end to the war.

“The killing of children cannot be justified,” the agency stressed, urging global action to end the bloodshed.