Gaza heads into a fourth winter in tents: UN reports aid convoys hit by incidents and 950,000 people at flood risk

Families in Gaza are heading into a fourth winter in tents and improvised shelters while United Nations aid operations face growing obstacles, the UN reported on 27 October. UN transport inside the Strip was suspended that day because Israel closed the Kerem Shalom crossing, the main entry point for aid, for election day, according to UN News.

The reports came from the UN’s daily briefing in New York and from agencies working on the ground. They describe a shelter population exposed to cold, wind and rain, a supply chain that keeps being interrupted, and a UN procurement agency whose staff have been caught up in security incidents.

Convoys and premises hit by incidents

The UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) said it had recorded three incidents affecting its convoys and premises on three consecutive days in the past week. Its Executive Director, Jorge Moreira da Silva, listed explosions close to its vehicles, drivers held at checkpoints and several rounds of small-arms fire that struck one of the agency’s guesthouses.

The safety of UNOPS staff, he said, has been compromised too many times. He stressed that all parties to the fighting must uphold their obligations to protect civilians and humanitarian personnel. The UN report did not attribute the incidents to a specific party.

Shelter and flood risk

The UN humanitarian coordination office OCHA said UN teams brought food, blankets, winter clothes, school items and fuel into Gaza on Monday, and that partners had distributed school bags to more than 8,000 children. A week earlier they supplied stationery to about 22,000 children and furnished some 300 classrooms serving around 60,000 pupils.

The relief is limited, however. Many families are living in worn tents with little protection from the weather. A shelter assessment found that around 950,000 people are in displacement sites at medium to high risk of flooding, and that the stocks available to support them are insufficient, according to the UN.

West Bank: Guterres “deeply alarmed”

At the same briefing, associate spokesperson Daniela Gross said Secretary-General António Guterres is following the Israeli offensive in Hebron closely. She quoted him as “deeply alarmed” by the operation and by the intensifying violence in the West Bank, and said he condemns that violence and firmly opposes settler attacks.

OCHA figures cited by the UN cover the period from January 2025 to the end of September 2026. In that time 331 Palestinians, including 77 children, were killed in the West Bank and more than 42,000 were displaced, while 21 Israelis were killed. OCHA also recorded 3,684 attacks by Israeli settlers that caused casualties or damage to property. Geopolitiki reported earlier on the UN human rights chief’s warning about Hebron in UN rights chief Türk warns Israel’s Hebron operation raises “serious concerns of ethnic cleansing” as more than 3,000 are displaced.

Special Rapporteur’s report on journalists

Also on Tuesday, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, briefed reporters online on her latest report, which focuses on the media. She said she could not attend in person because of sanctions the United States has imposed on her.

According to Albanese, citing UN sources, nearly 300 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza and more than 100 have been detained, many of whom she says were tortured. She said about 150 media centres and offices, which she put at 80 per cent of Gaza’s media infrastructure, have been destroyed, and that more than 139 attacks on journalists were recently recorded in the West Bank. She also criticised Israel’s ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza and said there has been no accountability for the killing of the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

Her report also documents the intimidation and repression of Palestinian journalists by Hamas in Gaza and by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, she said. These are the Special Rapporteur’s findings and statements, as relayed by UN News; Israel was not quoted in the UN report.

What to watch

The Kerem Shalom closure was tied to Tuesday’s election, so UN convoy movements are expected to depend on when the crossing reopens. With winter approaching, flood protection for the displacement sites and the safety of aid workers are the issues the UN agencies themselves single out.