Gaza City building collapse kills at least 20, with dozens feared missing

A six-storey apartment building weakened by an earlier Israeli strike collapsed overnight in Gaza City's Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, killing at least 20 people and leaving dozens more buried in the rubble, according to Gaza's Civil Defence agency and the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory. The structure, which held four apartments on each floor, had been sheltering displaced families with nowhere else to go.

Rescue crews worked through Wednesday with shovels and their hands, lacking the cranes and heavy lifting equipment needed to clear the debris quickly. Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said teams were "still working to recover martyrs" but that rescuers "lack the appropriate equipment" to reach everyone believed trapped beneath the collapsed floors. Video circulated by rescue workers on Wednesday showed neighbors and Civil Defence volunteers pulling at least one child alive from a gap in the debris, even as officials cautioned that most of those still unaccounted for were feared dead given the weight of collapsed concrete above them.

The numbers

Roughly 100 people, including about 50 children, were living inside the building when it came down, the UN humanitarian coordinator's office said. By Wednesday afternoon, Gaza's Civil Defence had confirmed at least 20 deaths, with officials warning the toll was likely to rise as search teams dug deeper into the wreckage. Dozens of residents remained unaccounted for, and local reports put the number still missing anywhere from several dozen to nearly 80, reflecting how difficult it has been for rescuers to even establish a reliable count inside the collapsed structure.

The collapse is a single, acute instance of a much larger structural crisis. Officials estimate roughly 2,000 damaged buildings across the territory are still inhabited, with around 400 considered at imminent risk of collapse. The war has left behind an estimated 61 million tonnes of rubble and debris, which the UN has said could take up to seven years to clear even under favorable conditions. A recent OCHA assessment found that intensified restrictions on the entry of cement, steel and other building materials have repeatedly delayed housing and shelter projects meant to move families out of unsafe structures.

How we got here

The building in Tal al-Hawa had been directly hit during an earlier phase of the war, leaving it visibly cracked and leaning before Wednesday's collapse, according to Civil Defence officials cited by Al Jazeera. Residents returned to live in it anyway, officials said, because tents and intact housing were simply unavailable. Tal al-Hawa, a dense neighborhood in Gaza City, has been repeatedly fought over and bombarded since the war began in October 2023; a Jordanian field hospital operating in the area was forced to relocate temporarily amid heavy shelling in 2025 before later resuming limited operations.

Large-scale fighting in Gaza was halted last October under a US-brokered ceasefire, formally endorsed by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2803, which authorized a temporary International Stabilization Force and set out a framework for reconstruction and governance in the territory. But the truce did not end violence entirely: Gaza health officials say more than 1,300 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in Israeli strikes since the ceasefire took hold, in operations the Israeli military has generally described as counter-terrorism actions. Reconstruction, meanwhile, has moved slowly. A recent OCHA situation update found that 58 percent of Gaza's population faces severe deficiencies in shelter or access to basic services, a gap humanitarian agencies say the coming rainy season will make more dangerous. Nearly a year after the ceasefire took effect, the transitional governance and reconstruction structures envisioned under Resolution 2803, including an international "Board of Peace" meant to oversee rebuilding, remain in their early stages, with heavy machinery, cement and steel still subject to case-by-case approval before they can cross into the territory.

Who is affected

The families living in Tal al-Hawa's damaged towers are among the hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans who have spent much of the past two years cycling between destroyed neighborhoods, tent camps and, increasingly, structurally compromised buildings that offer at least a roof. Gaza City Mayor Yahya Al Sarraj said the municipality and Civil Defence had effectively been left "paralysed," with tools he called inadequate for a disaster of this scale in a city still scarred by two years of bombardment.

Alessandro Mrakic of the UN Development Programme, which has been supplying some rescue equipment, described the gap starkly: people were "digging with their bare hands" for lack of machinery. Egypt has sent heavy equipment to assist the search, and the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have moved to deliver additional relief supplies, but officials said Wednesday that the response remained badly outpaced by the scale of need. UNDP has separately reported installing several hundred prefabricated relief housing units across displacement sites in Gaza since the start of the year, a fraction of what aid groups say is needed to move families permanently out of buildings like the one that fell in Tal al-Hawa.

Reaction

UN Humanitarian Coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov, who oversees the world body's aid operations in the occupied Palestinian territory, issued a statement expressing alarm and calling for faster international action to reach survivors and prevent further collapses.

"I am devastated by reports of people trapped under the rubble following the collapse of a building in Gaza, with lives at risk. No one should have to risk their life simply to find a safe place to shelter."

Alakbarov's office renewed calls for the swift entry of specialized rescue equipment, fuel, tents and tarpaulins, warning that hundreds of other damaged structures across Gaza pose similar risks to the families still living inside them, particularly as seasonal rains approach and further weaken already unstable walls and foundations.

What happens next

Search-and-rescue operations were continuing into Wednesday evening, with Civil Defence crews, UNDP personnel and the Egyptian equipment working in shifts to reach anyone still alive beneath the wreckage. Aid officials say the immediate priority is securing heavier machinery and technical rescue teams, which have been difficult to bring into Gaza given ongoing restrictions on equipment entering the territory. Gaza's government media office has also renewed calls for an accelerated, internationally supervised reconstruction timeline, arguing that delays in approving building materials are directly costing lives whenever another compromised structure gives way.

Beyond this single building, humanitarian agencies are pressing Israeli authorities and mediators involved in the ceasefire arrangement to accelerate approvals for construction materials and to fund the relocation of families out of the roughly 400 structures identified as most likely to fail next. Without that, UN officials warn, Wednesday's collapse in Tal al-Hawa is unlikely to be the last.