‘I saw how my baby started to freeze’ due to the cold, says mother of newborn dead in Gaza

“Did we flee the bombings of Beit Lahia so that he would freeze to death here?” asks Noura Al-Batran, the baby’s mother, in mourning, referring to her hometown in the north of the Strip, where the family fled due to to the incessant Israeli bombings.

The 38-year-old woman is still recovering from the premature birth of Jumaa and her twin brother, Ali, who is currently receiving treatment in an intensive care unit at a hospital in southern Gaza.

The Al-Batran family, displaced several times by the war between Israel and Hamas, currently survives under a makeshift tent in Deir el Balah, made from worn blankets and fabrics.

Like hundreds of other displaced people now living in camps, they struggled to stay warm and dry amid heavy rain and temperatures that dropped to 8°C.

“We don’t have enough blankets or suitable clothes. I saw how my baby started to freeze, his skin turned blue and then he died,” recalls Noura Al-Batran.