Gaza City, December 26 (RHC)-- A newborn baby froze to death in a tent encampment in Al-Mawasi, in southern Gaza, on Wednesday, highlighting the stark challenges to survival faced by Palestinian children displaced from their homes amid Israel’s ongoing assault on the strip.

Sela Mahmoud Al-Fasih “froze to death from the extreme cold” in Al-Mawasi, Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, the director general of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, posted on X on Wednesday.

In the past 48 hours, Al-Fasih and at least two other infants – a three-day-old and a one-month-old – have died from low temperatures and a lack of access to warm shelter, Dr. Ahmed Al-Farra, the head of pediatrics and obstetrics at Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis, told CNN.

Al-Mawasi, a coastal region west of Rafah, previously designated by Israel as a “humanitarian area,” has repeatedly come under Israeli attacks. Thousands of displaced Palestinians have moved there in search of refuge, living for months in makeshift tents made of cloth and nylon.

CNN footage from a courtyard in Al-Mawasi showed Al-Fasih’s small body wrapped in white shrouds, her 31-year-old father, Mahmoud, holding her. In another scene, a group of young Palestinian men and boys crouch by her grave.

“[Sela] died from the cold,” her mother, Nariman, told CNN on Wednesday. “I was warming her and holding her. But… [We] didn’t have extra clothes for me to warm this girl.” The video showed Al-Fasih’s face had turned blue.

Israel’s assault, launched after the Hamas-led October 7 attack, has gutted Gaza’s once-lively neighborhoods, erased entire families, and spawned a humanitarian crisis of starvation, displacement and rampant disease. More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed and 107,000 people injured, the health ministry there reported on Monday.

[ SOURCE:  CNN and AP ]