Gaza City — Living among rubble in a makeshift tent, Samah al-Dabla and her young children now face a danger they never encountered before the war: rats invading their shelter. Samah, displaced from Beit Lahiya, says she spends most of the day cleaning and keeping her three-year-old daughter Mayaseen and four-year-old son Asaad in sight, but the rodents keep returning.
A week earlier, Mayaseen woke her family screaming “Thief, thief.” When Samah picked her up she found blood on the child’s hand. A flashlight revealed a very large rat inside the tent. The local clinic could not treat the wound and Mayaseen was referred to al-Shifa Hospital in central Gaza City. Although treated, she remains terrified, sleeping only in her mother’s arms and waking at the sound of movement.
Samah says rats have become bolder and more numerous, taking shelter in piles of ruined buildings that pepper the city. She believes the rodents are emboldened by the abundance of debris and the presence of decomposing bodies under the rubble — a symptom of the wider death toll in the territory. “The situation is very frightening … rats and mice are everywhere,” she says, pointing to holes in the rubble where animals hide.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are living in tents after being forced from their homes. With reconstruction stalled despite a ceasefire that began in October, displaced families must manage with limited water, power and sanitation while trying to secure food and basic supplies. Those conditions create an ideal environment for rats and other pests, a problem expected to grow as summer approaches.
Samah has tried to buy rat poison but says prices are too high and her family’s income stopped after her husband, formerly a strawberry farmer, could no longer work. Food from community kitchens is frequently contaminated: she says she has returned to find rat droppings on bread and flour bags and has been forced to throw food away. Rodents also damage clothing, bags and the tents themselves.
Individual efforts to clean or clear rubble can displace rodents into neighbouring areas, Samah says, and she urges an organised, official response. “Everyone around me is suffering … neighbours, relatives … everyone is complaining because of the rats,” she adds.
Health officials describe the wider environment as hazardous. Dr Ayman Abu Rahma, director of preventive medicine at Gaza’s Ministry of Health, lists three drivers of the rodent surge: accumulated waste, damage to sewage infrastructure and rubble that can conceal decomposing bodies. He reports an increase in emergency and primary-care cases from bites, particularly among children and the elderly. People with diabetes are especially at risk because neuropathy can prevent them feeling a bite, allowing wounds to worsen and become infected. Rats can also spread disease through urine and droppings, causing fevers and other illnesses.
Gaza Municipality officials say the situation has been worsened by restrictions on imports of pest-control materials that had previously been used for rodent control, and by limited alternatives. Waste management has deteriorated: Gaza City’s main landfill holds roughly 300,000 cubic metres of refuse, providing a breeding ground for rodents within densely populated areas. Officials have discussed converting some waste into organic fertiliser, but municipal equipment was damaged or destroyed in the fighting, limiting options.
Basel al-Dahnoun, 47, describes how a rat bite added to his existing health burdens. Returning from a dialysis session, he fell asleep and was later woken by pain in his foot. His wife found their tent’s mattress soaked with blood and a rat nearby. Because he has diabetes and neuropathy, Basel did not feel the attack initially; doctors at hospital took samples and scheduled surgery to treat the wound. He says he now checks on his four children and wife constantly, and that nights are filled with the sound of rats tearing at canvas and attempting to enter tents.
Camp conditions — with little separation between sleeping, cooking, sewage and waste — make controlling rodents difficult. Residents use sticks and brooms to fend off animals but say there is no poison or coordinated pest-control programme available.
Families like Samah’s and Basel’s describe deep fatigue and fear. They plead for infrastructure support, sanitation, and organised pest control to reduce the health risks posed by the escalating rodent problem in Gaza’s displacement camps.