3 Palestinian babies freeze to death due to extreme cold in the southern Gaza Strip.
A newborn baby died from the cold in a tent encampment in Al-Mawasi, in southern Gaza, a health official said Wednesday, highlighting the stark challenges to survival faced by Palestinian children displaced from their homes amid Israel’s ongoing assault on the strip.
Sela Mahmoud Al-Fasih “froze to death from the extreme cold” in Al-Mawasi, Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, the director general of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, posted on X on Wednesday.
In the past 48 hours, Sela and at least two other infants – a three-day-old and a one-month-old – have died there from low temperatures and a lack of access to warm shelter, Dr. Ahmed Al-Farra, the head of pediatrics and obstetrics at Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis.
Al-Mawasi, a coastal region west of Rafah, previously designated by Israel as a “humanitarian area,” has repeatedly come under Israeli attacks. Thousands of displaced Palestinians have moved there in search of refuge, living for months in makeshift tents made of cloth and nylon.
CNN footage from a courtyard in Al-Mawasi showed Sela’s small body wrapped in a white shroud, her 31-year-old father, Mahmoud Al-Fasih, holding her. In another shot, a group of young Palestinian men and boys crouch by her grave.
“(Sela) died from the cold,” her mother, Nariman Al-Fasih, told CNN on Wednesday. “I was warming her and holding her. But… (we) didn’t have extra clothes for me to warm this girl.” The video showed the three-week-old baby’s face had turned blue.