‘No one asks about us’: 70,000 Gaza tents flooded in 12 hours

DUBAI: Asmaa Odeh did not sleep on Saturday night. She stood inside her tent in a Gaza displacement camp holding a broom, pushing out the rainwater and sewage that kept coming in, while her five children’s clothes, mattresses and blankets soaked through.

“Our tent flooded. The water came in, and the sewage and the well overflowed onto us,” she told Arab News. “We couldn’t do anything. All we could do was hold a broom and push the water and sewage out, so we wouldn’t drown.”

Odeh’s husband was killed in the war, and she now provides for their five children alone. When the storm passed, nothing dry was left. “My children’s clothes were all soaked,” she said. “My son had nothing to wear. He stayed like that the whole day.”