'Shivering from cold and fear': Rains batter Gaza's displaced

DESPITE THE TRUCE, GAZANS STILL FACE A SEVERE HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

- KHAN YOUNIS

Displaced Palestinian children brave the biting cold and pose for a photograph outside their tent-home in Gaza City.

(AFP)

It only took a matter of minutes after the heavy overnight rain first began to fall for Jamil al-Sharafi's tent in southern Gaza to flood, drenching his food and leaving his blankets sopping wet.

The winter rains have made an already precarious life worse for people like Sharafi, who is among the hundreds of thousands in the Palestinian territory displaced by the war, many of whom now survive on aid provided by humanitarian organisations.

"My children are shivering from cold and fear ... The tent was completely flooded within minutes," Sharafi, 47, said yesterday. "We lost our blankets, and all the food is soaked," added the father of six, who lives in a makeshift shelter with his children in the coastal area of Al Mawasi.