Inside Gaza’s death trap of collapsing, bombed-out buildings

With more than 40,000 Palestinians sheltering in collapse-prone buildings and a “nightmare” winter approaching, Gaza’s Civil Defense warns of a preventable catastrophe unfolding in plain sight.

Mondoweiss, By Mohamed Al-Astal September 18, 2026 Mohamed Al-Astal is a Gaza-based journalist, reporting across radio, print, and digital for regional and international outlets. His work focuses on humanitarian and environmental issues, bringing ground-level reporting from inside Gaza to audiences worldwide

Amr Adas pulls the remains of his family’s clothes from the rubble of the Al-Sa’ada building, friends steadying him so he doesn’t collapse. The structure fell onto the displaced families sheltering inside it, including his wife and five children. He places each item into an empty flour sack. When he reaches the clothes of his two children — Bilal, 6, and Dunia, 12, who died when the building collapsed before dawn on Wednesday — he breaks into wails.

His screaming rises from the eastern side of the site, mixing with bulldozers clearing rubble from the west for a second consecutive day. Friends and neighbors try to calm him, some with words, some with Quranic verses on patience.

“This is not God’s will,” he shouts, to no one. “This is the world’s silence over our annihilation. It’s the lack of even the most minimal support in finding a safe shelter. It forces us to accept any place to stay in, no matter how dangerous.”

Adas, 37, kneels at the site where he was rescued, amid rubble and dust. He points to what was his children’s room. Two are dead; three survived: Sama, 14, with multiple injuries; Malak, 10, with a pelvic fracture; and Mennatullah, a year and a half old.

He recalls that when the collapse began at 2:45 a.m., he jumped to shield the infant, but his wife, Nawal, 32, had already covered her with her own body. He embraced them both as the building fell around them, screaming to his other daughters in the next room: “Come here, come here.”

“The building kept collapsing for a few minutes, and everything was falling on us, and I heard nothing but the sound of bricks and concrete,” Adas said. “I could hear the screams of my four children in the next room, but I couldn’t move, and I could barely say a few words hoping to reassure them.”

As the Al-Sa’ada building crumbled, Adas didn’t know at first whether it was an Israeli strike or a collapse. He heard neighbors calling, “Is anyone alive?” and answered once, “We’re here, save us,” before he could no longer speak. His wife kept calling out until rescuers arrived, directed light toward them, and lifted the rubble with their hands and simple tools. Adas said he had been pinned under stones and a concrete pillar.

Adas, a motorcycle mechanic before the war and unemployed ever since, said he accepted living in the bombed building because there was no other space. “The occupation destroyed my home in Zeitoun, east of Gaza City, which is now inside the danger zone, and there was no room anywhere else,” he said. “Some specialists told us the place was dangerous and at risk of collapse, but we had no other options. I feel enormous guilt for accepting this choice and losing two of my children, but I swear to God we had no alternative.”

‘A crime that happened with the knowledge of the entire world’

Muhammad al-Sawtari, 30, was also at the site searching for his family’s scattered belongings. His wife suffered moderate injuries and had to leave the hospital because she was nursing their two-month-old daughter, Misk. Their older daughter, Sham, 9, suffered serious injuries and was admitted to intensive care. Their two other daughters were also injured……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Civil Defense currently operates only 15 ambulance, firefighting, and rescue vehicles, down from around 75 before the war. It owns no bulldozers or heavy machinery. UN institutions have no alternative shelter to offer residents beyond tents, which residents consistently refuse. Civil Defense holds a detailed list of collapse-prone buildings, nearly all inhabited, whose residents refuse to evacuate without mobile homes, an alternative Israel refuses to allow into Gaza, according to UN institutions.

He said removing the collapse-prone buildings requires capabilities entirely unavailable now, but described a one-year plan achievable with around 50 pieces of heavy machinery, alongside a suitable alternative for the displaced families living in them.

Basal described the international community’s inaction as complicity. “Aren’t we in Gaza human beings who deserve life like everyone else?” he asked. “Why the silence and weakness in the face of the occupation? The world is complicit in these crimes.” https://mondoweiss.net/2026/09/inside-gazas-death-trap-of-collapsing-bombed-buildings/