Heavy rain lashed the Gaza Strip this weekend, flooding makeshift encampments with ankle-deep puddles as displaced Palestinians struggled to stay dry. Tents, frayed by months of use, were inundated, with muddy water soaking blankets and mattresses in camps like Khan Younis.

Fragile shelters were propped up with salvaged wood. Children, ill-suited in flip-flops and light clothing, waded through freezing puddles that turned dirt roads into rivers. Some residents desperately used shovels to clear water from their temporary homes.

"We drowned last night,” said Majdoleen Tarabein, a woman displaced from Rafah in southern Gaza. “Puddles formed, and there was a bad smell. The tent flew away. We don’t know what to do or where to go.”

She showed blankets and the remaining contents of the tent, completely soaked and covered in mud, as she and family members tried to wring them dry by hand.

“When we woke up in the morning, we found that the water had entered the tent,” said Eman Abu Riziq, also displaced in Khan Younis, as she pointed to a puddle just outside. “These are the mattresses — they are all completely soaked. My daughters’ belongings were soaked. The water is entering from here and there,” she said, gesturing toward the ceiling and the corners of the tent. Her family is still reeling from her husband’s recent death, and the constant struggle to stay dry in the winter rains.

At least 12 people, including a 2-week-old infant, have died since Dec. 13 from hypothermia or weather-related collapses of war-damaged homes, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, part of the Hamas-run government.

Emergency workers warned people not to stay in damaged buildings because they could collapse at any moment. But so much of the territory reduced to rubble, there are few places to escape the rain. In July, the United Nations Satellite Center estimated that almost 80% of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged.

Since a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect on Oct. 11, 414 people have been killed and 1,142 wounded in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry. The overall Palestinian death toll from the war has risen to at least 71,266. The ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians in its count, is staffed by medical professionals and maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by the international community.