A POLAR low-pressure storm poses a serious danger to displaced families and residents amid the massive destruction caused by the Israeli genocide that has led to the near-total collapse of the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure, the Gaza Municipality warned on Wednesday.
As Storm Byron approaches, flash floods, strong winds and hail are forecast throughout Palestine, including in war-torn Gaza, until Friday evening, according to the Palestinian Meteorological Department.
Officials warned that hundreds of thousands of displaced people are at risk because their shelters are weak and crowded.
The mayor of Gaza City says several roads have been cut off and tent shelters flooded, some of them completely submerged.
Municipal spokesman Husni Muhanna said the recurring winter storms now pose ‘a direct threat to the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians’, especially those living in displacement camps that lack any protective structures.
Muhanna noted that Israeli occupation forces destroyed more than 85 per cent of the municipality’s equipment, crippling the ability of emergency crews to respond to flooding, pump accumulated water, and support residents in affected areas.
He added that the heavy rainfall in recent hours has already submerged thousands of tents across the Strip.
Displaced families, he said, are living in makeshift shelters that cannot withstand rain, wind, or freezing temperatures, warning that conditions are rapidly moving toward a ‘compound humanitarian disaster’.
Muhanna reported a severe shortage of essential materials required for municipal work and urged immediate international pressure on Israel to allow the entry of emergency equipment, shelter materials, and basic humanitarian supplies.
According to earlier figures released by the Government Media Office, Gaza requires nearly 300,000 tents and prefabricated housing units to provide even minimal shelter for displaced residents, after two years of systematic destruction targeting infrastructure, public services, and residential areas.
- Palestinian prisoner Abdul-Rahman al Sabbatin, a 21-year-old from the town of Husan near Bethlehem, was pronounced dead at Israel’s Shaare Zedek Hospital yesterday.
According to different Palestinian rights groups, prisoner Sabbatin has been in Israeli jails since June 24, 2025.
Sabbatin’s death brings the total number of Palestinian prisoners who have died since 1967 in Israeli jails due to torture, medical neglect and harsh conditions to 322, whose identities are known only to rights organisations.
Regarding the number of prisoners and detainees who have died since the start of the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, human rights organisations have documented that the toll has exceeded 100, though the figure is not final.
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