BBCSila was less than three weeks old when her mother, Nariman, realized she was not moving.
Nariman Al-Najma says: “I woke up in the morning and told my husband that the child had not moved for a while. He uncovered her face and found that she was blue, biting her tongue, and blood coming out of her mouth.”
In their tent on the beach in the southern Gaza Strip, Nariman sits with her husband, Mahmoud Fasih, and their two young children – Rayan, four years old, and Nihad, two and a half years old.
The family says they were displaced more than 10 times during the war, which lasted 14 months.
“My husband is a fisherman, and we are from the north and were left without anything, but we did it for the sake of our children,” Nariman said in an interview with a freelance photographer working for the BBC. Israel prevents international media from entering and working freely on the ground in Gaza.
“When I was pregnant, I was thinking about how to buy clothes for the baby. I was very worried because my husband did not have a job.”
For the 20 days of her life, Sela’s home was the small, crowded camp in the “Humanitarian Mawasi Zone,” where the Israeli military had ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from elsewhere in the region to move.
The region suffers from poor infrastructure and sanitation, as well as floods caused by rain and waves coming from the Mediterranean Sea.
“The cold is bitter and harsh,” says Mahmoud, Sila’s father. “All night long, because of the cold, we huddle together and lean next to each other.”
“Our life is hell. It is hell because of the effects of war. My family was martyred, and our situation is unbearable.”
Despite civilians being asked to head to the area, the Israeli army repeatedly bombed Al-Mawasi during its campaign against Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza.
Sela's death was not due to the bombing, but rather the punitive conditions that war imposes on civilians.
She was one of six newborns who died of hypothermia during a two-week period in Gaza — where nighttime temperatures dropped to 7 degrees Celsius (45 Fahrenheit) — according to local health authorities, who also reported that several thousand tents had been set up. Damaged by weather.
Nariman says that Sela was born in a British field hospital set up in the Khan Yunis area.
“After I was born… I started thinking about how to secure her milk and diapers. Everything I got, I got with great difficulty.”
“I never thought I would give birth living in a tent, in such cold and freezing conditions, with water dripping on us. The water would seep into the tent, pouring down on us. Sometimes, we had to run to escape the water – for the baby,” she says. Nariman.
However, Sela was born without complications.
“Her health was good, thank God,” Nariman says, “and suddenly she started to be affected by the cold.” “I noticed that she was sneezing and seemed to be getting sick from the cold, but I never expected that she would die from it.”
Last Wednesday, Sila was admitted to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, where Dr. Ahmed Al-Farra, director of the pediatric department, said that she was suffering from “a severe drop in body temperature, which led to the cessation of vital signs, cardiac arrest, and ultimately death.” .
“(The previous day) also, two cases were brought in: one was a three-day-old baby and the other was less than a month old. Both cases experienced severe hypothermia, which led to death,” says Dr. Farra.
Children have an underdeveloped mechanism for maintaining body temperature and may easily develop hypothermia in a cold environment. Premature babies are particularly at risk, and Dr. Farra says doctors in Gaza have noticed an increase in the number of premature births during the war.
Mothers also suffer from malnutrition, which makes them unable to breastfeed their children adequately. According to Dr. Farra, there is also a scarcity of infant formula due to restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Then on Sunday, another tragic case.
Outside Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, another local photographer working with the BBC met Yahya Al-Batran, who could not contain his suffering as he carried his dead infant son, Juma. Like Silla, he was also only 20 days old and was blue from the cold.
Yahya said: “Touch him with your hand, he is frozen.” “The eight of us, we don’t have four blankets between us. What can I do? I see my children dying in front of me.”
“These avoidable deaths expose the desperate and deteriorating conditions facing families and children across Gaza,” UNICEF Regional Director Edward Bigbeder said in a statement on Thursday.
“With temperatures expected to drop further in the coming days, it is tragically expected that more children’s lives will be lost due to the inhumane conditions they are suffering from.”
Under the sounds of Israeli drones flying in front of her, Sila’s father, Mahmoud, carried her body from Nasser Hospital to a makeshift cemetery in Khan Yunis. There he dug a small grave in the sand.
After burying Sila, Mahmoud consoled Nariman.
“Her brothers are sick and exhausted,” Nariman says. “We are all sick. Our chests hurt, and we catch colds from the cold and rain.” “If we don't die from war, we die from the cold.”
