Israeli forces carried out two strikes in the central Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 10 Palestinians, including four children, while heavy rains flooded tent encampments sheltering displaced residents, according to medics.
The assault on Gaza, now nearly a yearlong, carried on even as international attention turned to the conflict in Lebanon and northern Israel between Hezbollah and Israel.
Palestinian health officials said at least five Palestinians were killed at a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Nuseirat, one of the Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps.
Later Monday, an Israeli airstrike on a house in the city of Deir al-Balah, where a million people have taken shelter, killed a woman and four children, medics said. There was no immediate Israeli army comment on the incident.
More misery
Heavy rains overnight piled more problems onto Gaza's displaced as downpours flooded tents, washed some of them away, and forced families out of their sleep.
Some placed water buckets on the ground to protect mats from leaks and dug trenches to drain water away from their tents. The price of new tents and plastic sheeting to prevent leaks shot up.
Ahmed al-Burai, 30, said people made their tents of used sacks of flour, worn-out clothes, and nylon bags. As soon as it rained the water and wind blew many tents away and flooded others.
"Everything is drowned, the blankets, the food, and the people in just a few hours of rain," Burai told Reuters over the phone from al-Mawasi, a humanitarian-designated area in the southern Gaza Strip.
"Most of the displaced can't afford the new prices of tents and plastic sheeting. Just two days ago the price of plastic sheeting stood at 100 to 200 shekels ($27 to $54) and today it has risen to 700 and 800 shekels ($189 to $216) because of the greed of merchants," Burai said.
More shelters and supplies to help people cope with the coming winter were needed, the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said.
"As autumn begins, plastic and fabric are not enough to protect people against the rain and the cold," the relief agency posted on X.
Most of Gaza's 2.3 million have been displaced in nearly a year of warfare as Israeli air and artillery strikes have reduced much of the Palestinian enclave to rubble.
Israel's genocidal war has killed over 41,300 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
The war was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion that caused around 1,200 deaths and took about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.