UN calls for urgent shelter for 1 28 million people in Gaza

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called on Saturday for the lifting of restrictions on access to those in need in the Gaza Strip before winter claims more lives, warning that some 1.28 million people in Gaza are in urgent need of assistance.

The recent storm has resulted in the deaths of 11 Palestinians and left one missing after several buildings collapsed. It also damaged or partially submerged 53,000 tents, according to the director of the Government Media Office in Gaza.

Ismail al-Thawabta, the director of the office, told a press conference in Deir al-Balah that civil defense teams recovered the bodies of 11 Palestinians from under the rubble of approximately 13 buildings that had been targeted by Israeli airstrikes and subsequently collapsed due to the heavy rains and storm conditions.

Ammar Dweik, director of the Independent Commission for Human Rights in Palestine, said that Gaza is unprepared to face these weather conditions, adding that Israel is preventing the entry of necessary tents and has so far allowed less than 30% of the tents needed by the residents of the Gaza Strip to enter.