70,000 tents flooded in Gaza as civil defense declares state of maximum emergency

Gaza's civil defense authorities declared a state of maximum emergency on Saturday as a rainstorm flooded around 70,000 tents housing displaced Palestinians and overwhelmed rescue services, reported Xinhua.

The authorities said in a statement that water levels in some residential areas have reached 1.5 meters. Civil defense operations rooms had received 2,166 distress calls since the storm began, while rescue teams could only respond to 218 calls due to the overwhelming number of requests and limited resources.

The authorities called on the international community to pressure Israel to allow the entry of specialized rescue equipment and vehicles, as well as tents, plastic sheeting and mobile homes to provide emergency shelter for displaced families.

In a separate statement, the Hamas-run media office said dozens of walls had collapsed across the enclave, causing injuries of varying severity, some of them serious.

It added that preliminary estimates put direct losses caused by the storm at around 3 million U.S. dollars.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Health Minister Majid Abu Ramadan warned that developing cold weather and successive storms could push the situation to even more dangerous levels, particularly as displaced families have exhausted much of their ability to cope and lack even the most basic means of protection.