Gaza's First Winter Storm Floods Tents of 26,000 Households as the UN Warns Shelter Stocks Are Exhausted

Civil Defence logged more than 2,100 distress calls by Monday and warned that over 2,000 buildings risk collapse, Al Jazeera reported. OCHA says at least 4,000 high-risk buildings have been identified.

Why is there so little shelter inside Gaza?

OCHA says stocks of tents, tarpaulins, blankets and clothes inside the strip are "virtually exhausted," while more than 150,000 tents, 300,000 tarpaulins and 500,000 blankets are ready to be sent from outside, about 117,000 of the tents held by the Egyptian Relief Committee in Al-Arish. The agency attributes the thin preparedness to Israeli restrictions on bringing in supplies and equipment, together with funding shortfalls, and says pumps and drainage are failing for lack of fuel, engine oil and spare parts.

The International Rescue Committee, in a statement on Monday, put the need at about 121,000 tents and 1.7 million mattresses as of 1 November, against about 2,800 tents available inside Gaza. Its emergencies vice president Bob Kitchen said the ceasefire had not brought shelter to almost 2 million displaced people. Al Jazeera adds that Israel told the UN on 1 November it would suspend shipments from Egypt, and that aid groups warn daily cooked meals could fall from about 600,000 to 330,000. The sources reviewed carry no Israeli government statement on the flooding itself.

What is the ceasefire toll since October 2025?

Gaza's Ministry of Health says 20 more Palestinians were killed in the past week, bringing the toll since the October 2025 ceasefire to 1,613 as of 9 November. Hamas has urged mediators and the Board of Peace not to tie rebuilding to political or security conditions.

Most tents are designed to last about six months, the IRC notes, and many families are in ones from last winter or earlier. More storms will come before spring, and what reaches the strip through the crossings in the next few weeks decides how many of those households stay dry.