Sila was less than three weeks old when her mother Nariman realized she wasn’t moving.
“I woke up in the morning and told my husband that the baby had not moved for a while. He uncovered her face and found her blue, she bit her tongue and blood was coming out of her mouth,” says Nariman al-Najmeh.
In their tent on a beach in southern Gaza, Nariman sits with her husband Mahmoud Fasih and their two young children – Rayan, four, and Nihad, two and a half.
The family says they were displaced more than 10 times during the 14-month war.
“My husband is a fisherman, we are from the north and we were left with nothing, but we did it for our children,” says Nariman in an interview with a freelance cameraman 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 get clothes for the baby. I was very worried because my husband doesn’t have a job.”
During her 20 days of life, Sila’s home was a small and overcrowded camp in the “humanitarian area” of al-Mawasi, where the Israeli army ordered the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from other parts of the territory.
The area suffers from poor infrastructure and sanitary conditions, as well as from flooding caused by the rain and waves of the Mediterranean Sea.
“The cold is strong and sharp. All night, because of the cold, we huddle together,” says Sila’s father Mahmoud.
“Our life is hell. It is hell because of the consequences of the war, my family is a martyr, and our situation is unbearable.”
Despite telling civilians to go to the area, the Israeli military repeatedly attacked al-Mawasi during its campaign against Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.
Sila’s death was not a bombing – but still caused by the harsh conditions that war imposes on civilians.
She is one of six newborns to have died of hypothermia in a two-week period in Gaza – where nighttime temperatures fell to 7C (45F) – according to local health authorities, who also reported that many thousands of tents had been damaged by the weather.
There are severe restrictions by Israel on the delivery of food and other aid to Gaza, the UN says, exacerbating the wartime humanitarian crisis. Israel denies that it is restricting aid.
Nariman says Sila was born in a British field hospital that was established in the Khan Younis area.
“After I gave birth… I started thinking about how I could provide her with milk, diapers. Everything I got, I got with great difficulty.”
“I never thought I would give birth living in a tent, in such cold and icy conditions, with water dripping on us. The water would leak into the tent, pour over us. Sometimes we had to run to escape the water – for the sake of the baby,” says Nariman.
However, Sila was born without complications.
“Her health was good, thank God. “She suddenly started getting cold,” says Nariman. “I noticed that she sneezed and it seemed like she got sick from the cold, but I didn’t expect her to die because of it.”
Sila was admitted last Wednesday to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where Dr. Ahmad al-Farra, director of the pediatric department, said she suffered from “severe hypothermia, which led to cessation of vital signs, cardiac arrest and ultimately death.”
“[On the previous day] two cases were also brought: one was a three-day-old baby, and the other was less than a month old. Both cases involved severe hypothermia, resulting in death,” says Dr. Farra.
Babies have an insufficiently developed mechanism for maintaining their own body temperature and can easily develop hypothermia in a cold environment. Children born prematurely are especially vulnerable, and dr. Farra says medics in Gaza have seen an increase in premature births during the war.
Mothers also suffer from malnutrition, as a result of which they cannot adequately breastfeed their babies. There is also a shortage of infant formula due to restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid, according to Dr. Farri.
Then on Sunday another, tragic case.
Outside al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza, another local cameraman working for the BBC met Yehia al-Batran, who could not contain his anguish as he carried his dead son Juma. Like Sila, he too was only 20 days old and was blue from the cold.
“Touch it with your hand, it’s frozen,” said Yehia. “All 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 preventable deaths reveal the desperate and worsening conditions facing families and children across Gaza,” Unicef regional director Edouard Beigbeder said in a statement on Thursday.
“With temperatures expected to drop further in the coming days, it is tragic to predict that more children’s lives will be lost due to the inhumane conditions they are living in.”
To the sound of Israeli drones flying ahead, Sila’s father Mahmoud carried her lifeless body from Nasser Hospital to a makeshift cemetery in Khan Younis. There he dug a small grave in the sand.
After laying Sila to rest, Mahmud consoled Nariman.
“Her brothers and sisters are sick, exhausted. We are all sick. Our chests hurt, we have colds from the cold and the rain,” says Nariman. “If we don’t die of war, we die of cold.”
