DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza — A sandy embankment collapsed onto tents sheltering displaced families south of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza on Sunday, November 8, killing five people, Gaza's Civil Defence said. Three of the dead were children and the dead were members of two families, according to the Palestinian newspaper Filastin, whose reporting was carried by the Spanish wire EFE. Six other people were injured, some of them very seriously, Filastin reported. In line with this site's minor-safety rule, the victims are not named here.
Civil Defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the accident happened when an earthen embankment gave way onto tents at a camp for displaced people in central Gaza, and that rescue workers were continuing to search for missing people under the sand on Sunday. Al Jazeera's live coverage also reported five people killed in the sandbank collapse. No official count of the missing was published in the reports used here.
A storm that had already flooded 70,000 tents
The collapse came on the second day of the severe storm that moved in on Saturday. Heavy rains flooded tens of thousands of tents housing displaced Palestinians crammed into encampments across the Gaza Strip, washing away shelters and soaking blankets and mattresses, local authorities told Reuters. The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said at least 70,000 tents had been flooded in the past 12 hours, affecting tens of thousands of displaced people and causing injuries, although no fatalities had been reported from the flooding itself. Municipal and civil defence officials said they were unable to cope with the storm because of fuel shortages and damage to equipment, and said Israel had destroyed hundreds of vehicles, including bulldozers and water-pumping equipment, during the war. Hamas blamed Israel for not allowing shelters and construction materials into Gaza; COGAT, the Israeli military agency that co-ordinates aid, did not immediately comment on the accusations, Reuters reported.
Source: Reuters, Nov 8 2026 — flooding, 70,000 tents, fuel and equipment shortages, COGAT no comment
Awaaz Punjab reported the storm's first day on Saturday, when civil defence teams logged about 1,500 distress calls as rain flooded displacement camps across the Strip. Read the earlier report: Gaza winter storm floods tents, 1,500 distress calls
Hamas, which controls Gaza, blamed Israel as 'entirely responsible' for the dune's collapse, linking it to the blockade, the ban on bringing in reconstruction materials and the bar on new construction. The movement argued that more than two million Palestinians are concentrated in less than one third of the Gaza Strip, with dangerous consequences for an overcrowded population living in improvised camps. Those are Hamas's claims, made in a statement reported by EFE; Israel did not comment on the collapse itself in the reporting reviewed here.
Source: Democrata (EFE), Nov 8 2026 — Hamas statement on the collapse
The same Sunday, a strike in al-Mawasi
The storm deaths were not Sunday's only losses. Health officials at Nasser Hospital told the Associated Press that an Israeli strike killed a Palestinian man and a woman on Sunday in al-Mawasi, the coastal area where displaced people shelter in tents; Israel's military said it had struck a Hamas member in the area. Al Jazeera reported that at least six Palestinians were killed in Gaza over the past 48 hours on the enclave's Health Ministry figures, bringing the number killed since the October 2025 ceasefire to 1,580. Palestinian authorities say more than 74,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its assault after the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel.
What is solid
- A sandy embankment collapsed onto displaced families' tents south of Deir al-Balah on Sunday, November 8, killing five people, three of them children (Civil Defence via TT; Al Jazeera; Filastin via EFE).
- Six people were injured, some very seriously, and rescue workers were still searching for missing people under the sand on Sunday (Filastin via EFE; Civil Defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal via TT).
- The collapse happened during a storm that flooded tens of thousands of tents across Gaza, with civil defence and municipal teams hampered by fuel shortages and damaged equipment (Reuters).
What is only claimed
- Responsibility for the collapse: Hamas called Israel 'entirely responsible', citing the blockade and the ban on reconstruction materials; that is a claim by one party to the war, and Israel did not comment on the collapse in the reports used here.
- The 70,000 flooded-tents figure comes from the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, as reported by Reuters; it has not been independently verified.
- The exact number of people still missing under the sand was not given in the reports used here.
Why tents are now the deadliest address in Gaza
Most of Gaza's population now lives in tents or makeshift shelters because large parts of the Strip were destroyed in the war that followed October 7, 2023 — which is why a weather event, not a bomb, produced Sunday's deadliest single incident. A US-brokered ceasefire last year called for the eventual reconstruction of Gaza, but little progress has been made, Reuters reported, and the four additional vacuum trucks that entered Gaza this week through the International Committee of the Red Cross — joining eight brought in over the past month for sewage pumping, waste removal and water repairs — underline how thin the Strip's basic infrastructure remains as winter approaches. For the families south of Deir al-Balah, the danger was not only the rain but the ground itself: camps pitched against sandy banks that the rain turned unstable.
What happens next
Rescue teams were still digging on Sunday, so the toll from the collapse may rise. Forecasters and aid agencies have warned that more winter rain will hit camps where, on the UN's earlier estimates carried in weekend coverage, around 294,250 families need shelter assistance and more than 1.6 million Palestinians remain in tents or makeshift shelters. The immediate questions are whether sturdier shelter and construction materials are allowed in at scale — the demand Hamas repeated on Sunday and aid agencies have made for months — and whether camps pitched beside embankments and dunes are moved before the next storm. Until then, each new band of rain is a fresh emergency for people with nowhere solid to sleep.