The first winter storm of the year has flooded tens of thousands of displaced people's tents across Gaza and killed five people, after heavy rain caused a sand dune to collapse onto a shelter in the central Gaza Strip, Palestinian authorities and the United Nations have said.
Gaza's civil defence said five people died on Sunday, three children and two women, when a sandy embankment collapsed onto tents housing displaced people at a shelter centre near the Al Berka reservoir, west of Deir al-Balah. One other person was injured. The collapse came after heavy rain and strong winds began lashing the territory on Friday night, the first major storm of the winter.
The storm flooded displacement camps across all five of Gaza's governorates. According to the territory's Government Media Office, about 70,000 tents sheltering tens of thousands of displaced people were flooded on the first day of the rains alone. Hundreds of families were seen fleeing camps in Gaza City and in the central and northern areas as water rose around them.
The United Nations aid coordination office, OCHA, said in an update on Monday that the storm had damaged or destroyed thousands of shelters, leaving more than 3,900 households without shelter and overwhelming emergency response services. By 8 November, humanitarian partners had received appeals for help from more than 26,000 households whose shelters or belongings had been damaged.
The scale of the emergency is shown in the figures from Gaza's civil defence. Units received 2,166 distress calls during the storm but were able to respond to only 218 of them. Water levels rose to 1.5 metres in some locations, and residents of one tent camp in Deir al-Balah said overflowing sewage had surged in with the floodwater, soaking mattresses, clothing and other belongings.
The storm also hit the territory's battered education system. At least 55 learning spaces serving about 55,000 children were flooded, according to OCHA, and an infant was reported to have drowned at a displacement site. The Government Media Office put the initial damage from the storm at about three million dollars.
Speaking from Ramallah, the UN Deputy Special Coordinator, Ramiz Alakbarov, said that while rain could not be prevented, more must be done to protect the vulnerable. Most people in Gaza are living in worn-out tents that cannot withstand what would be considered a moderate storm elsewhere, he said, and the storm had exposed just how fragile the shelter situation has become.
The flooding comes as Gaza's displaced population faces the winter in makeshift shelters, many of them damaged by two years of war. A fragile ceasefire came into effect on 10 October 2025, but the territory's infrastructure remains devastated, and aid agencies say the supply of tents, tarpaulins and blankets is far short of what is needed. Nearly 400,000 displaced Palestinians are sheltering in locations considered highly vulnerable to further flooding, according to reports from the territory.
Palestinian authorities have criticised what they call global indifference and inaction after the deaths, arguing that the shelter crisis was foreseeable and that more tents and building materials should have been allowed in before the winter rains began. Aid agencies have warned for weeks that the first storms of the season would be a severe test for families living in tents.
The storm is expected to be only the first of the winter. With more rain forecast in the coming weeks, humanitarian agencies are racing to assess damaged shelters and deliver what help they can, but they say the needs far outstrip the supplies available. For the families who lost their tents, mattresses and belongings in the floodwater, the immediate question is where they will sleep tonight, and whether the next storm will find them any better protected.
