Wednesday’s collapse in Gaza City, which killed at least 12 people and left dozens more trapped, was not a freak accident. It was close to inevitable. Gaza’s housing stock has been battered for two years, and a huge share of what’s left standing is standing on borrowed time.
The Immediate Event
A seven-storey building, already weakened by earlier strikes, gave way overnight. Gaza’s civil defence service reported at least 12 dead and 14 injured, with close to 100 people feared still trapped beneath the debris as rescue teams worked through the rubble by hand.
Civil defence director Raed Al-Dahshan said crews could still hear people beneath the wreckage hours after the collapse. “We are still hearing voices from under the rubble, so there is still hope to find people,” he said, as teams continued digging.
A Housing Crisis Built on Damaged Concrete
The uncomfortable truth is that this building was never supposed to be lived in — it just happened to be one of the only roofs available. Gaza’s civil defence service estimates that around 2,000 damaged buildings across the territory are currently housing displaced families, simply because intact housing is in such short supply.
Spokesperson Mahmoud Basal has been warning for months that this is a countdown, not a maybe. “There are approximately 400 buildings at risk of collapse. And we know that these buildings will collapse, especially now with the upcoming winter,” he said.
Why the Rubble Hasn’t Been Cleared
Two years of bombardment have left behind an estimated 61 million tons of debris across Gaza, a figure the United Nations says could take as long as seven years to clear at current capacity. That backlog matters directly to what happened Wednesday, because clearing debris and stabilising weakened structures both require heavy machinery that Gaza’s civil defence teams say they simply don’t have enough of.
Palestinian officials and UN agencies point to Israeli restrictions on equipment entering Gaza as the main bottleneck. Israel maintains that the restrictions are necessary to prevent that same machinery from being diverted to militant groups. Whatever the justification, the practical result on the ground is rescue workers digging through seven storeys of concrete with hand tools.
What Happens Next
Search operations were continuing as of Wednesday, and officials cautioned that the death toll could rise as more of the site is cleared. Beyond this single building, the underlying problem isn’t going anywhere: as long as tens of thousands of people have no alternative to damaged, unstable housing, collapses like this one are likely to keep happening, especially with winter storms adding further stress to already weakened structures.
FAQs
Where did the building collapse today?
The most recent deadly collapse happened in Gaza City, where a seven-storey building already damaged by earlier fighting came down overnight, trapping dozens of people who had been sheltering inside. Gaza’s civil defence service has not identified a single cause beyond the building’s pre-existing structural damage, and an investigation into the exact trigger is ongoing.
How many buildings has Gaza destroyed?
Assessments from UN agencies have put the proportion of Gaza’s buildings that are destroyed or damaged at close to 80 percent. On top of that, local officials say thousands of these damaged structures remain occupied because there is no safer alternative, and hundreds are considered at active risk of collapsing without warning.
What was the worst building collapse in history?
Historically, some of the deadliest single building collapses on record occurred outside conflict settings, such as the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, which killed over 1,100 garment workers. In a war zone like Gaza, however, collapses are usually the delayed result of prior strike damage rather than one isolated structural failure, which makes the comparison somewhat apples-to-oranges.
