Displaced Palestinian families live in a school converted into a shelter near a landfill, in Gaza, April 20, 2026. IMAGO/STRINGERSHUB VIA REUTERS CONNECT
Amid a sea of tents sheltering more than 1.5 million people in the devastated Gaza Strip, a new scourge of rodents and insects is spreading. Nighttime has become terrifying for the four children of the al-Bassiouni couple since the youngest, one-year-old Rahab, was scratched on the face by a rat. "She was sleeping, and all of a sudden, she started screaming. That's when we saw the rat on her cheek, and we managed to chase it away. She had a fever and developed a skin reaction, and I am still taking her to the hospital," said her mother, Yasmine, 34, who spoke by phone – like all witnesses in this article, as Israel still bars foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip. "The children are now too afraid to sleep. They jump at the slightest noise in the tent, and I spend the night watching over them."
Yasmine and her husband can do little to protect their children, ages 1 to 12, all suffering from skin diseases and constant itching. Originally from northern Gaza, and now crammed into the al-Mawasi camp in the South, the family has been forcibly displaced 15 times, always with the same tent.
