At least six newborns froze to death last week in Gaza, after humanitarian groups warned for months that Israeli forces were blocking the entry of crucial cold weather supplies into the besieged enclave.

The last death occurred on Monday, that of Ali al-Batran, 21 days old. in the intensive care unit from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza City. The baby’s twin brother, Jumaa, died of hypothermia on Thursday.

The twins’ father, Yahya al-Batran, told media that he woke up Sunday morning and felt Jumaa’s head, which was “cold as ice,” he said. The family home was just a tent covered with blankets. They took the twins to the hospital, where the doctor told al-Batran that Jumaa was dead. The twins are named after family members who were killed a few weeks ago in Israeli strikes, according to Looking at the Middle East.

“There are eight of us and we only have four blankets,” explains the twins’ father. said Al Jazeera. “There is no electricity. The water is cold and there is no gas, no heating, no food…. My children are dying before my eyes and no one cares.

In recent days, Gaza authorities have recorded four new deaths of newborns from the cold, aged between four and twenty days. Authorities also recorded at least one adult recently dying from hypothermia.

Temperatures plummeted to 40 degrees Fahrenheit at night, with Palestinian families braving rain and wind in dilapidated shelters, mostly makeshift tents, on the beach. Al-Batran said dew regularly seeps through the cracks of his family’s tent, making the interior damp.

For months, Israeli forces have prevented humanitarian groups from bringing supplies such as clothing, tents and winter supplies into Gaza. The UN recently said that nearly a million Palestinians in Gaza – about half the population – do not have sufficient provisions for the winter. The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said that winter supplies sat in aid trucks lined up outside the border for months, awaiting approval from Israel that often never arrives.

Malnutrition also makes people, especially children and babies, more vulnerable to conditions such as hypothermia. The director of medical relief in Gaza and northern Gaza, Muhammad Abu Afash, said the babies we die every day “intense cold and lack of the necessities of life such as food, drinks and baby milk”, according to the Palestinian news wire Wafa.

Ahmed al-Farra, head of the pediatrics department at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, said BNC that the hospital sees two to three cases of hypothermia per day.

There were likely more deaths from hypothermia that were not recorded by health authorities. Such deaths are not counted in the official tally of genocide deaths reported by Gaza health officials, as they are instead taken into account. as “indirect” deaths not caused by anything like a bomb or gunfire from Israeli forces.

The Palestinians rather often resort to to bury their family members without reporting their death; Israeli policy of killing Palestinians on sight in certain locations, its constant bombardmentsand prohibitive costs due to lack of basic resources have made traveling across the region to access health care almost impossible. Health care, meanwhile, is an extremely scarce resource due to Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health system.