‘She was like wood’: Baby girl freezes to death in Gaza as Israeli strikes kill at least 10 | World News

At least 10 people, including five journalists, have reportedly been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza, while a three-week-old baby girl froze to death while staying in a tent camp.

An Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood killed five people and wounded 20, medics said, adding the death toll could rise as many people remained trapped under the rubble.

Separately, five journalists working for the Al-Quds Al-Youm television channel were killed when their vehicle was hit in the vicinity of Al-Awda hospital in Nuseirat in central Gaza, the enclave’s Hamas-run health authorities said.

The vehicle was marked as a media van and was used by journalists to report from inside the hospital and Nuseirat camp.

The Israel Defence Forces said its aircraft attacked the vehicle in a “targeted manner”, adding members of the Islamic Jihad militant group were inside.

They have not yet commented on the strike in Gaza City’s Zeitoun area.

Israel has been waging a war on Gaza since 7 October last year, when Hamas, the militant group in control of the besieged enclave, killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and kidnapped more than 250 others – an unprecedented attack which marked the bloodiest day in Israeli history.

Since then, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has claimed the lives of more than 45,361 people, according to local authorities.

In the early hours of Christmas morning, a three-week-old baby girl, named Sila, is reported to have frozen to death while in a tent camp in the Muwasi area outside the southern town of Khan Younis.

Her father, Mahmoud al Faseeh, wrapped her in a blanket to try and keep her warm but it wasn’t enough, he told The Associated Press (AP).

He said the tent was not sealed from the wind and the ground was cold, as temperatures on Tuesday night dropped to 9C.

Read more from Sky News:
Candid King opens up about anxieties of illness
Boxing Day Tsunami: ‘Palm trees snapped like matchsticks’

Mr al Faseeh described how the night was so cold it was a struggle for adults too. His daughter had woken up overnight three times crying and in the morning she was found unresponsive. “She was like wood,” he said.

They rushed Sila to the hospital but her lungs were found to have already deteriorated.

A picture taken by AP showed the little girl with purple lips, her pale skin blotchy.

Ahmed al-Farra, director of the children’s ward at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, confirmed that the baby died of hypothermia.

He said two other babies – one three days old, the other a month old – had been brought to the hospital over the past 48 hours after dying of hypothermia.