Gaza Building Collapse Kills 21, Including 11 Children, as Ceasefire-Era Rebuilding Stays Frozen

A residential building in Gaza City's Tal al-Hawa neighborhood collapsed in the early hours of Wednesday, September 16, killing at least 21 people, including 11 children, as they slept. The building, known as the Al-Saada building, was already known to be structurally unsound after being damaged by Israeli strikes earlier in the war, according to Xinhua and the Guardian.

Zaher al-Wahidi, a spokesperson for the Gaza Health Ministry, said the death toll reached 21 and at least 14 people were injured, a figure reported by the Associated Press (via Breitbart) and echoed by KIRO 7 and Minnesota Public Radio News. Xinhua and the Guardian put the number of injured higher, at more than 25. Accounts also differ slightly on how many women died: AP cited five, Xinhua cited six. All sources agree 11 children were among the dead.

Civil defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Xinhua that rescue teams saved 45 people and recovered 21 bodies over a 16-hour operation, with another 35 people escaping the rubble on their own. The six-story building had four apartments per floor and, according to Breitbart's AP report, sheltered around six displaced families. The Guardian put the number at more than 10 families, and Xinhua said the building housed roughly 100 displaced people in total. It collapsed onto tents pitched beside it that housed additional displaced families, according to the Guardian.

Digging with bare hands

Rescuers had no heavy equipment on hand when the building came down. Mohammed Abu Dan, a civil defense supervisor overseeing the recovery, told the Guardian that "search and rescue operations are being carried out under extremely difficult conditions due to a lack of the necessary equipment and resources." Raed al-Dahshan, director of Gaza City's civil defense service, said rescuers could still hear voices from beneath the rubble hours into the operation: "We are still hearing voices from under the rubble, so there is still hope to find people."

Alessandro Mrakic, head of the UN Development Programme's Gaza office, told the Guardian that UN and Egyptian relief teams joined the search. "There are actually people that are digging with their bare hands," he said. "We need to prepare [for more deaths]." Louay al-Ajla, 54, told Xinhua he lost nearly 10 family members in the collapse. "I received the news at dawn. It was devastating," he said.

Blocking the machinery

Palestinian officials and UN staff blame Israeli restrictions for the shortage of excavators and fuel needed to safely clear damaged buildings. Xinhua reported that the Hamas-run media office in Gaza says more than 8,500 people remain missing under rubble across the territory and called thousands of damaged buildings "ticking time bombs." Basal said more than 2,000 residential buildings are at risk of collapse as winter approaches and called on the ceasefire-guarantor nations and the so-called "Board of Peace" to speed equipment into Gaza.

Israel disputes that it is blocking machinery. Asked by the AP whether it would allow equipment in to help with this specific collapse, COGAT, the Israeli military body that coordinates aid into Gaza, said the government's policy is that heavy machinery is permitted into the territory. Separately, Israel has said it won't allow large-scale reconstruction until Hamas disarms, a policy confirmed in the ceasefire deal reached nearly a year ago but never fully implemented, according to Breitbart's AP report. No side disputes that reconstruction has not meaningfully begun since that deal was signed.

A UN human rights chief, quoted by the AP, said the bodies recovered from collapsed buildings so far may be just the "tip of the iceberg," adding: "It is heartbreaking that the loved ones of those missing for so long are only now having their worst fears confirmed. Much of Gaza has been flattened by Israeli bombing or demolition and clearing by heavy machinery and explosives."

Separately this week, Fox News reported that the New York Times removed a sentence from a Monday article about a documentary on Israeli forces killing Palestinians in Gaza. The original sentence read that "Israelis still largely view themselves as the victims of Oct. 7," language that Israeli journalist and former IDF member Eitan Fischberger called "grotesque" for framing an attack that killed roughly 1,200 people as a matter of Israeli perception rather than fact. The Times told Fox News Digital the line was included due to an "editing error" and added an editor's note saying the sentence "inadvertently suggested that Israelis' experience as terror victims was a matter of perception." The episode is unrelated to the building collapse but reflects the broader dispute over how the war and its casualties are described in real time, on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.

Elsewhere in the region Wednesday, Saudi Arabia said its air defenses intercepted a drone headed toward Mecca on Tuesday evening and blamed Iran-backed Houthi rebels, a claim the Houthis denied, according to KIRO 7 and Minnesota Public Radio News. Those outlets also reported that Saudi Arabia has asked France, the UK, Pakistan, and Egypt for air-defense support amid strained U.S. interceptor stocks, and that the World Health Organization's Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned of malnutrition and disease risk as more than 100,000 Yemenis are displaced by fighting.

In Gaza City, rescue crews finished digging through the Al-Saada site by Wednesday afternoon, according to al-Wahidi. The unresolved question is what happens to the roughly 2,000 other buildings Basal says are at risk of the same fate before winter sets in, and whether the equipment needed to clear or shore them up gets into Gaza before the next one comes down.