Five babies die from the cold in Gaza as temperatures drop

GAZA, Dec 30 (SABAH): A boy less than three weeks old was among the latest to succumb to winter weather, Gazan officials said. Families displaced by Israel’s attacks have little more than tents and tarps to protect them.

At least five babies have died from the cold in Gaza in the past week, health authorities there say, as winter worsens the toll on a population traumatized by 15 months of conflict.

Jumaa al-Batran, less than three weeks old, died in intensive care after he and his twin brother, Ali, were rushed to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza, the territory’s health ministry said.

The twins and their parents had been living in a tent in a camp for displaced people in the city of Deir al Balah. “I woke up and found my son stiff like a block of wood,” Nora al-Batran, their mother, said a media report. “I tried to shake him awake, but there was nothing. The child was stiff, blue, dark blue in color from the cold.”

Ali, who like his brother was born premature, was in critical condition and on a ventilator in the hospital’s intensive care unit because of the effects of hypothermia, according to Dr. Wisam Shaltout, head of the hospital’s neonatal unit. “Conditions inside tents in this cold weather make it next to impossible for babies like Ali and his brother to survive,” he said.