Heavy rains and cold weather cause more misery in Gaza

Palestinians are bailing muddy water out of their frigid tents after heavy rains in war-ravaged Gaza.

Hundreds of thousands of people are living in sprawling tent camps along the coast, where winter brings frequent rainstorms and temperatures drop below 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) at night. At least four babies have died of hypothermia in recent weeks, according to local health officials.

“I’m drowning,” Manal Lubbad sobbs as she wads in ankle-deep water inside her tent today, trying to salvage blankets and other belongings. “I’m taking everything out into the street.”

“We are dead, we are not alive! Why is this happening?” she says.

The Civil Defense, first responders affiliated with Hamas, says it received hundreds of emergency calls to evacuate people from flooded shelters.

Associated Press footage showed barefoot children wading through muddy water between rows of tightly packed tents.

Muhammad Diab places an empty cooking pot on the dirt floor of his tent to catch rainwater leaking through the roof.

“For God’s sake, find a solution for us. We’ve had enough,” he says. “In the summer there was intense heat and we could bear it, but in the winter we are drowning.”