Gaza babies freeze to death as winter temperatures drop

Sila was less than three weeks old when his mother Nariman noticed that he was not moving.

“I woke up in the morning and told my husband that the baby had not moved for a while. He uncovered her face and found her blue, biting her tongue and with blood coming out of her mouth,” says Nariman al-Najmeh.

In her tent on the beach in southern Gaza, Nariman sits with her husband, Mahmoud Fasih, and their two young children: Rayan, four, and Nihad, two and a half.

The family says they have been displaced more than 10 times during the 14 months of war.

“My husband is a fisherman, we are from the north and we were left with nothing, but we did it for our children,” says Nariman in an interview with a freelance cameraman who works for the BBC. Israel prevents international media from entering and working freely on the ground in Gaza.

“When I was pregnant, I used to think about how I was going to get clothes for the baby. I was very worried because my husband doesn’t have a job.”

For his 20 days of life, Sila’s home was the small, overcrowded camp in the al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone”, where the Israeli army ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from other parts of the territory to move.

The area suffers from poor infrastructure and sanitation, as well as flooding caused by both rain and waves from the Mediterranean Sea.

“The cold is bitter and hard. Because of the cold, we huddled next to each other all night,” says Mahmoud, Sila’s father.

“Our life is hell. It is hell because of the effects of the war, my family was martyred and our situation is unbearable.”

Despite telling civilians to head to the area, the Israeli military has repeatedly attacked al-Mawasi during its campaign against Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.

Sulla’s death was not due to a bombing, but was caused by the harsh conditions that the war is imposing on civilians.

She is one of six newborns who have died of hypothermia in a two-week period in Gaza – where night temperatures have fallen to 7°C (45F) – according to local health authorities, who have also reported that many thousands of tents have been destroyed. been damaged by weather.

Nariman says Sila was born in a British field hospital established in the Khan Younis area.

“After giving birth… I started thinking about how I could get her milk and diapers. Everything I got, I got with great difficulty.”

“I never thought I would give birth living in a tent, in such cold and icy conditions, with water dripping on us. The water would leak into the tent and fall on us. Sometimes, we had to run to escape the water .for the baby’s sake,” says Nariman.

Still, Sulla was born without complications.

“Her health was good, thank God. Suddenly, she began to be affected by the cold,” says Nariman. “I noticed that he was sneezing and seemed to get sick from the cold, but I never expected him to die from that.”

Sila was admitted last Wednesday to the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, where Dr. Ahmad al-Farra, director of its pediatrics department, said he had suffered “severe hypothermia, which caused the cessation of vital signs, cardiac arrest and , finally, death.” .

“(The day before) there were also two cases: one was a three-day-old baby and the other was less than a month old. Both cases involved severe hypothermia resulting in death,” says Dr. Farra.

Babies have an underdeveloped mechanism for maintaining their own body temperature and can easily develop hypothermia in a cold environment. Premature babies are especially vulnerable and Dr Farra says doctors in Gaza have seen an increase in the number of premature births during the war.

Mothers also suffer from malnutrition, which prevents them from breastfeeding their babies sufficiently. According to Dr. Farra, there is also a shortage of infant formula due to restricted humanitarian aid deliveries.

Then, on Sunday, another tragic case.

Outside Al Aqsa hospital in central Gaza, a second local cameraman working with the BBC met Yehia al-Batran, who could not contain her anguish as she held her dead son, Jumaa. Like Sulla, he was also only 20 days old and blue with cold.

“Touch it with your hand, it’s frozen,” Yehia said. “The eight of us don’t have four blankets between us. What can I do? I watch my children die in front of me.”

“These preventable deaths lay bare the desperate and deteriorating conditions facing families and children across Gaza,” Unicef ​​regional director Edouard Beigbeder said in a statement Thursday.

“With temperatures 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 are enduring.”

Under the sound of Israeli drones flying ahead, Sila’s father, Mahmoud, carried his lifeless body from Nasser Hospital to a makeshift cemetery in Khan Younis. There he dug a small grave in the sand.

After letting Sulla rest, Mahmoud comforted Nariman.

“Their brothers are sick, exhausted. We are all sick. Our chests hurt and we have colds from the cold and the rain,” says Nariman. “If we don’t die from war, we will die from the cold.”