At least 21 dead and 45 injured in the collapse of a block of flats in Gaza

BarcelonaWith most buildings razed and almost no space left in displacement camps, many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have no other alternative than to barely survive in apartment blocks semi-destroyed by Israel's genocidal campaign. A crowded building collapsed early this Wednesday in Gaza City.

According to Civil Defense officials who spoke to ARA by phone, the collapse has left 21 dead, including 8 children, and 45 injured, while emergency teams and neighbors, working with their bare hands because Israel does not allow tools or machinery into the Strip, continue searching for survivors in the rubble. At first, there was talk of dozens of missing persons, but later the figure was lowered to ten, as 35 people living in the building had left hours before the collapse after some concrete blocks of the building began to fall.

The local press points out that the building, located in the Tal al-Hawa district, had been hit a year ago by an Israeli bombing that had damaged its six-story structure with four apartments each. Witnesses cited by the BBC claim that it had been visibly shaking since then, but that the families living there had nowhere else to go.

The Israeli blockade on the entry of machinery and construction materials has made it impossible so far to begin reconstruction, and these collapses are becoming increasingly frequent. "We can still hear voices in the rubble, there is hope of rescuing more survivors," said Raed al-Sahshan, director of Civil Defense in Gaza City. "The lack of shelters forced the residents to live in this building, knowing it was not safe," he added.

Ramiz Alakbarov, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories, has urged a rapid response from countries like Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, or Qatar to assist in the rescue efforts: "Lives can still be saved, every minute counts".

The head of the UN Development Programme, Alessandro Mrakic, has warned that some 400 buildings throughout the Strip are in imminent danger of collapse, which will be aggravated by the rains and the winter cold. About 1.9 million people, 90% of the Strip's population, have been displaced by the attacks of the Israeli army, which has destroyed 80% of the Strip's infrastructure. 1.2 million Gazans are surviving in tents.

As the mayor of Gaza City, Yahya al-Sarraj, recalled to Al Jazeera, "it is not the first time a building has collapsed, and I fear it will not be the last." He asserts that both the city council and civil defense services are "paralyzed" by the lack of tools and fuel to extract survivors from the rubble. Hamas authorities have held the Israeli occupation responsible for this.

Despite the ceasefire announced by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, a year ago, the Israeli offensive has not stopped: on Tuesday, the Israeli army killed five Palestinians in the Strip, and a patient died in a drone attack on a medical center in Jabalia, in the north.