PALESTINE – A mother and a child were killed, and another person injured when fire broke out at a shelter housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza City on Thursday.

The Gaza Civil Defense said in a statement that its teams recovered two bodies and evacuated an injured person after the fire in Al-Yarmouk shelter in Al-Daraj neighborhood in central Gaza City.

The cause of the fire was not yet clear.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are living in tents and temporary shelters amid a severe lack of safe shelter supplies, after Israel’s two-year war destroyed entire residential areas and forced mass displacement.

Most tents lack basic safety measures, making them vulnerable to fires, especially as people rely on primitive means for heating and cooking due to power outages and severe fuel shortages.

The Israeli army has killed more than 71,000 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 171,000 others in Gaza since October 2023.