Eighth Gaza baby freezes to death as Israel kills 88 people in one day

Israeli forces killed at least 88 Palestinians in one day in Gaza. They shelled the enclave more than 100 times in just three days, killing more than 200 Palestinians, with women and children making up the majority of victims. Meanwhile, another baby in Gaza died of hypothermia – the eighth such death amid the Israeli genocide in the enclave.

The child died of hypothermia amid the harsh climate and lack of adequate shelter. The grieving father, seen in the hospital morgue, lost two children to hypothermia this winter. Families like his face harsh conditions in makeshift tents that offer little protection from the freezing cold, and many lack basic necessities like blankets, mattresses and winter clothing due to ongoing restrictions on aid from Israel.

Families are forced to live inside flimsy, makeshift tents that cannot give them any strong protection against the biting cold. Many families are left out in the open. They have no blankets, mattresses and winter clothing due to the ongoing Israeli ban.

220 journalists

Mohammad Hijazi, a Palestinian writer, poet and journalist, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, according to his family, bringing the total number of journalists killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict since 7 from October 2023 to 220.

“I don’t know if I’ll write to you again. I keep what I wrote and I’m writing. Maybe it will come to light one day. I refuse a cheap death. I curse the murderer,” Hijazi wrote on Facebook in August last year.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed at least 45,805 Palestinians and injured 109,064 since October 7, 2023. At least 1,139 people were killed in Israel during Hamas-led attacks that day and more than 200 were taken prisoner.

The Israeli army killed 88 Palestinians in Gaza in the last 24 hours. An attack on a house in Gaza City killed 13 members of a family, with several people remaining, with many feared trapped under the rubble.

Disproportionality

The nearly 46,000 Palestinians murdered represent almost 2.2% of their population. Comparing this number to hypothetical death figures in other countries, if a war of the same scale were launched against Israel, exterminating 2.2% of the population would mean more than 220,000 Israelis being killed. In Ukraine, the death of 2.2% of the population would mean a death toll of 845,000. In the US, it would be the equivalent of killing 7.6 million Americans.

Israeli strikes have killed more than 200 Palestinians in Gaza over the past three days, as the military continues to target residential buildings as well as people gathered in streets, markets and shelters.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said that although Israel claims to have targeted Hamas fighters, most of the victims are innocent people. “We are seeing women and children making up the vast majority of victims,” he said.

Israelis gather at a viewpoint to watch the destruction of northern Gaza in what has been called genocidal tourism. Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jews wear army helmets and ammunition vests borrowed from soldiers on the hill in the southern town of Sderot. They also use binoculars to watch Israeli forces bomb the northern Gaza Strip on January 5, 2025.

With information from Aljazira