Witnesses Describe Frantic Rescue as Gaza Sand Bank Collapse Buries Displaced Family

On Sunday, a sand bank towering over a camp for displaced families south of Deir al-Balah gave way after a stretch of high winds and heavy rain. It buried at least three tents and killed five people. Among the dead were an eight-year-old, a six-year-old and their mother.

Abdul Karim al-Sahhar, 30, was there. He is originally from Izbat Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, and his own shelter was badly damaged in the collapse. He described seeing people under the sand and rocks, none of them moving or making a sound. The tent they had been in had vanished so completely, he said, that no trace of it remained.

The children's father was outside the tent when the bank came down, which is why he survived. Sahhar said one of the children had called him to come and eat with them, and he was a little late returning. Then the collapse happened. He began shouting for people to save his children, and neighbors came and started digging. A huge boulder lay on top of the victims, and young men had to break it into pieces to reach those underneath.

Another witness, Abu Darbali, told Reuters the collapse sounded like an explosion. Three tents, he said, were covered completely, and people were trapped beneath rubble that rescuers could not see through. Video posted to social media showed men swinging hammers at large rocks, others clearing sand with shovels, and flashlights sweeping the ground in search of anyone still alive.

The landslide was one part of a wider weekend of damage. The UN said more than 26,000 households had reported harm to their shelters or belongings after the rainstorms. The Hamas-run government media office said about 70,000 tents sheltering tens of thousands of displaced people were flooded on the first day of rain, and that dozens of cracked walls and roofs collapsed, causing injuries, some of them critical.

Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people live in tent encampments or in the ruins of bombed-out buildings, and reconstruction has not begun after Israel's two-year military assault, launched following the Hamas attacks on southern Israel in October 2023. Toby Fricker, a Unicef spokesperson, said the collapse was waiting to happen: Gaza is extremely overcrowded, and people are simply trying to find a place wherever they can. Unicef has been working to prevent similar tragedies and to improve drainage in the camps.

Sahhar said he and his family are now homeless. His tent, mattress, household utensils and everything else he owned are under the sand, and he could not retrieve anything.

The question of materials sits behind much of this. Mustafa Qazzaat, a Gaza City council member, said Israel has not allowed prefabricated homes since the truce was announced and has permitted only limited numbers of tents. Many so-called dual-use items remain restricted, including metal tent poles, so humanitarian workers have used wooden poles fashioned from pallets that carry food. Earlier this year, an assessment by shelter specialists in Gaza found that thousands of tents supplied by China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia offered only limited protection against rain and wind. Cogat, the Israeli defence ministry body overseeing aid, said more than 91,000 tents and over 8,200 trucks carrying tarpaulins, blankets and winter clothing have reached Gaza, along with fuel and engine oil for pumping facilities and other humanitarian installations.

A US-brokered ceasefire last year called for Gaza's eventual reconstruction, but little has moved. Negotiators have not agreed on terms for Hamas to disarm or for Israel to withdraw troops, who control about two-thirds of the territory and from which residents have been ordered to leave. Israel says no reconstruction can happen before Hamas is disarmed. With that standoff unresolved, the families in the camps face the rest of the rainy season in the same tents.