Torrential rain from Wednesday evening has pounded dilapidated homes and crumbled tents across Gaza Strip, claiming lives and compounding the humanitarian situation in the war-torn region.
At least 14 people were killed in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours as homes collapsed and tents sheltering displaced families were flooded during a powerful winter storm, Gaza's Civil Defense said on Friday.
A woman taking shelter in a war-damaged house voiced concerns that the makeshift shelters, which were previously destroyed or severely weakened during recent Israeli bombardments, offer no real protection from the storms.
"The house leaks and stones would fall when it rains. It's not safe. We're afraid it could collapse on us any moment. But we have no choice and no other place to go, so we have to stay here," she said.
Rescue teams responded to 13 collapsed or partially collapsed houses, saving 52 people and moving them to safer locations. Search operations are ongoing after more than 15 homes were damaged across the territory.
"From the early hours until now, rescue crews and Civil Defense teams in northern Gaza have been working to retrieve the missing from beneath the rubble of this house. So far, they have recovered one victim and a child who was injured, but five people remain trapped under the debris and their condition is still unknown," said a rescue worker.
Victims died beneath the rubble rather than from missiles, highlighting the compounded dangers facing displaced families forced to shelter in unsafe ruins, with no alternative refuge available after more than two years of war.
"People sat peacefully at home, taking shelter from the wind, rain and cold. Suddenly, around three or three-thirty, the house collapsed on them for no reason except the torrential rain and flooding," a resident said, recalling the disaster.
Torrential rain brings more deaths, destruction to war-torn Gaza
The holdings of the Liaoning Provincial Archives in northeast China on Imperial Japanese Army Unit 731 directly align with Khabarovsk trials testimonies donated by Russia's state archives, making the cross-verified materials irrefutable proof of the unit's brutal wartime crimes.
Inside the Liaoning Provincial Archives, staff retrieved a 1950 file: The first official evidence-gathering record on Unit 731 made after the founding of the People's Republic of China. It was compiled back then by the Northeast Health Ministry, documenting Japan's germ warfare crimes at the Harbin site. This is China's earliest formal effort to catalog the unit's atrocities.
"On March 11, 1950, acting on the Central Ministry of Health's instructions, the Northeast China Health Ministry probed Japan's germ warfare units and gathered relevant materials. Meanwhile, the northeast people's government issued a circular, mandating detailed victim investigations with witness testimonies, material evidence, or photos and documentary records," said Gong Zhuolu, deputy director of Archives Compilation and Industrial Culture Research Department under the Liaoning Provincial Archives.
When Japan surrendered in 1945, Unit 731 fled Harbin in haste. Abandoned germ-carrying rats and fleas spread into residential areas, triggering large-scale plague and outbreaks. The file includes germ warfare evidence: witness testimonies, victim accounts, and local notices to gather proof, cementing the unit's atrocity record.
"These archival materials align with witness testimonies from the Khabarovsk Trials and Shenyang Trials, serving as compelling evidence to confirm Unit 731's germ warfare crimes," Gong said.
These files preserved by the Liaoning Provincial Archives are just the tip of the iceberg. As Jin Chengmin, curator of the Unit 731 Crime Evidence Hall, noted: "The full extent of Unit 731's crimes remains undisclosed. No one knows exactly how many people were subjected to human experiments -- only Japan holds the key to these answers."
Chinese archives' evidence of Unit 731 biological war crimes aligns with Russian Khabarovsk trials records
