At least five Palestinians, including three children, were killed late Sunday when a sand embankment collapsed at a displacement camp in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, raising fresh concerns over the perilous living conditions faced by displaced Palestinian families.
The deadly incident was triggered by recent heavy rainfall as the rainy winter season sets in. Several others were injured as large amounts of earth cascaded down, burying their tents. Local authorities warned that the danger remains high in and around these makeshift shelters.
Survivors recounted harrowing scenes of desperation as they scrambled to save their loved ones in the collapse.
"The masses of earth collapsed on us, burying my mother, my children and my sister beneath the tent. I managed to rescue my mother and children from under the sand. I also saved my brother, whose face was completely covered in sand. Thank God, he survived," said Abdel Karim Al-Sahhar, a displaced Palestinian.
However, not everyone was as fortunate. Mustafa Al-Masri, another displaced resident, described the agonizing lack of resources during the rescue efforts.
"When we arrived, we found this huge mass of mud had collapsed onto people. We had no lights or equipment to rescue them, including the children and a pregnant woman. We couldn't help them because we had no rescue equipment. We dug with our bare hands and pulled the children out dead," said Al-Masri.
The tragedy underscores the dire reality for the vast majority of Gaza's two million residents, who continue to live in fragile tent encampments or the ruins of bombed-out buildings.
With large-scale reconstruction yet to begin following Israel's three-year military assault, many families are now bracing for their fourth winter of coping with floodwaters that frequently overtake tents and soak their meager belongings.
Mohammed Abboud, acting head of the Ministry of Public Works and Housing in Gaza, warned that such disasters are likely to recur as long as aid supplies remain severely restricted from entering the besieged strip.
"This is a tragedy that could happen again every day because basic living conditions are lacking. We are talking about camps set up in dangerous areas, facing a harsh winter. The solution is to provide safe places and permanent mobile homes for people here, because tents offer no protection from the winter cold or the summer heat," said Abboud.
Rain-triggered sand embankment collapse kills 5 in central Gaza
Rain-triggered sand embankment collapse kills 5 in central Gaza
China on Saturday released the top 10 benchmark scenarios for the multi-hazard, alert, zero-gap and universal (MAZU) platform, an AI-driven meteorological early warning solution, at a sideline event of the ninth China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai.
The scenarios were selected from 20 teams shortlisted worldwide. The selection focused on the most critical areas of global meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation and explored pathways to turn digital-intelligence meteorological advances into disaster-prevention capabilities, based on the feasibility of scenario applications, the advancement of AI technology, data security and regulatory compliance, and the replicability of innovation.
The scenarios will leverage the CIIE to engage financial institutions in Shanghai and Chinese companies going global, expand their applications, and support global green and low-carbon development and climate governance.
"We're working with the Shanghai Meteorological Service on the MAZU system. We think that in Jordan, this system will help us make the warnings in exactly time for the public, to save the public from this flash flooding," said Ra'ed Ahmad Subhi Rafid, director of the Jordan Meteorological Department.
"In Malaysia, we still don't have many landslide early warning platforms, so that's why we collaborate with the China counterparts. We collect the data from MAZU, which is the data from a satellite Fengyun and the data from CMA (China Meteorological Administration) and also the data from Beidou for our GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) equipment. This is a good collaboration between Malaysia and MAZU," said Kamarul Hawari Bin Ghazali, a professor at Universiti Malaysia Pahang Al-Sultan Abdullah.
"In the first phase, we plan to install equipment for the port and then for the mine extraction areas, by the end of this year for the ports. We need the MAZU project cover all the country by providing service for all the social economic development sectors, like energy, agriculture, transportation, risk management, disaster management, tourism and so on," said Rene Tato Loua, director general of the National Agency of Meteorology of Guinea.
The MAZU system integrates observation data from China's Fengyun meteorological satellites and domestically developed AI weather forecast models to provide high-resolution, rapidly updated weather monitoring and natural disaster pre-warning services, and to support disaster relief efforts, the CMA said.
Named after Mazu, the traditional Chinese goddess of the sea and protector of sailors, the system has already been deployed in seven countries while supporting cloud-based trials in more than 50 nations. In the years to come, the China-made MAZU system is expected to be applied in 30 countries.
China unveils top 10 MAZU AI early warning scenarios at CIIE
