Seela al-Faseeh was just two weeks old when her father, Mahmoud al-Faseeh, 31, said he carried her from their makeshift tent near Khan Younis to the pediatric emergency room at Nasser Hospital on Wednesday, shortly after that his body turned blue and rigid. .
“We woke up and found the girl like wood,” Faseeh told NBC News.
When doctors examined the baby, they found no health problems or congenital problems. Instead, they said, his heart had stopped beating due to the drop in temperature overnight.
He was born in the middle of the war, Faseeh said, but died from the cold.
Ahmed al-Farra, director of the hospital’s pediatric ward, confirmed to NBC News that Seela had died of hypothermia, a medical emergency that occurs when the body’s temperature drops to dangerously low levels. Dying from hypothermia could take hours or days, and babies and children are especially vulnerable.
He added that he deals with these cases daily, and that at least four babies died due to the intense cold in Gaza last week.
“Every day we have two or three cases of hypothermia,” he said. “This is catastrophic and a disaster.”
So far, the United Nations estimates that more than 14,500 children have died in 14 months and thousands more have been injured.
That rate, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency, said Tuesday, means that one child in Gaza dies every hour.
As a harsh winter approaches the besieged territory, temperatures in southern Gaza have dropped especially at night, and most displaced tented Palestinians cannot find ways to stay warm amid the cold, wind and rain.
“Cold injuries, such as frostbite and hypothermia, pose serious risks to young children who find themselves in tents and other makeshift shelters that are ill-equipped for freezing weather,” Edouard said in a statement Wednesday. Beigbeder, UNICEF regional director for the Middle East.
“As temperatures are expected to drop further in the coming days, it is tragically foreseeable that more children’s lives will be lost due to the inhumane conditions they endure, which offer no protection from the cold,” he added.
Beigbeder said the ability of aid workers to provide essential winter protection, such as blankets, warm clothing and other emergency supplies, is severely restricted by the limited humanitarian aid that Israeli authorities are allowing in Gaza.
On Friday, Lazzarini said blankets and other winter supplies “have been stuck in the region for months awaiting approval to enter Gaza.”
In a post on tons of winter supplies since the start of the war.
Mahmoud Faseeh described his family’s situation as “tough” in the sands of al-Mawasi, once a coastal village along Gaza’s southern Mediterranean coast, which has since become a crowded camp for hundreds of thousands of people displaced from the enclave.
“We sleep on the sand without blankets and the tent does not protect us from the cold,” he said. “I don’t know what to say. It is a very tragic, tiring life and the children are constantly sick due to the cold and the effects of the war.”
Ahmad al-Zahrani, a nurse working at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, is among those who have died from the cold in recent days.
His body was found inside a tent in al-Mawasi on Friday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement confirming his death. “Ahmad al-Zahrani has passed away due to the severe cold that residents of the Gaza Strip are experiencing.”
“This incident comes amid the difficult humanitarian conditions faced by displaced citizens, as the suffering of Gaza residents increases due to falling temperatures and lack of heating resources in tents,” he continued.
The war that followed the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, which Israeli officials say killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, has decimated Gaza.
Since then, Israeli forces have killed some 45,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and destroyed much of the enclave’s basic infrastructure and health system.
This week, UNICEF issued a stark warning against the disproportionate impact of war on Gaza’s children, especially during the winter.
“Winter has now arrived in Gaza. The children are cold, wet and barefoot. Many still wear summer clothes. Now that cooking gas has run out, many are searching through the rubble for plastic remains to burn,” said Rosalía Bollen, UNICEF communications specialist, during a press conference in Geneva.
