A NINE-month-old boy has become the first child to die of cold in Gaza this winter, medics said yesterday, as the UN appealed for winter supplies, which Israel continues to restrict.
Kinan Ahmed Raqiq died of hypothermia in his family’s tent in Khan Younis.
‘I woke up only to see his skin had turned blue so I rushed him to Nasser Hospital, but he had already died from hypothermia and frozen to death,’ his father, Ahmed, said.
Five people, three of them children, died this week when an embankment collapsed onto flooded tents. Storms had hit 26,000 households by 8 November, the UN said.
More than 50 countries and organisations, led by Britain, Qatar and Jordan, have demanded that Israel let in shelter, fuel and medical supplies.
On the day Kinan was brought to the Nasser Medical Complex, an Israeli strike on its surgery department killed at least six people, among them surgeon Dr Rizq Abu Shuaira and a 13-year-old child.
‘He did not deserve to meet his demise while among the patients in the hospital corridors,’ said Health Ministry spokesman Zaher al-Waheidi. Israel claimed, without evidence, that the hospital was used as a Hamas command centre.
Israel has killed at least 1,725 medical workers in Gaza since it launched its genocidal war in October 2023. Just 20 of Gaza’s 37 hospitals partially function, and 44 per cent of essential medicines are out of stock.
Dr Husam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, has been held for more than 500 days.
On Wednesday, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a petition for his release and refused to let an independent doctor examine him, after Physicians for Human Rights Israel obtained a medical review showing he had lost 14kg in four months.
‘The torture and abuse have risen to such a level that we draw conclusions about this being a policy that has been implemented by the Israeli Prison Service against Palestinian detainees,’ said its director, Tirza Leibowitz.
In the occupied West Bank, about 30 armed settlers seized eight Palestinian homes in al-Duyuk al-Tahta near Jericho last week. France last week turned back settler leader Yossi Dagan over ‘his active role in implementing the settlement policy in the West Bank’.
Israel has since barred French left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has pledged French naval escorts for Gaza aid flotillas if elected president next year.
Due to BDS campaigning, Dana Petroleum has quit an Israeli-led consortium exploring for gas in Palestinian waters off Gaza, following Italy’s Eni.
‘Murphy Oil, which has now taken the place of Dana and Eni abandoned, should expect exactly the same treatment,’ said Juman Muhammad of the BDS movement.
In Lebanon, UNRWA funding cuts have shut 11 of 26 health centres in Palestinian refugee camps, and residents of Beirut’s Shatila camp called a sit-in for yesterday.