Gaza: Collapsed Building Kills at Least 20

A residential building in Gaza City, already damaged by an earlier Israeli air strike, collapsed overnight into Wednesday, September 16, while residents were asleep inside. Local media reported that the building had been left cracked and structurally unstable by the previous strike, but families with nowhere else to go kept living in it anyway.

Conflicting casualty figures

Sources disagree on the final death toll. UN News and the American network NBC News report that at least 20 people were killed. NBC adds that six children are among the dead and that 14 people were injured, and that the building had seven floors housing at least ten families.

Al Jazeera, citing Palestinian Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal, gives a higher figure: at least 21 dead, including five children, and 45 injured. According to that report, the building had six floors with four apartments on each.

Estimates of how many people lived in the building also differ. The UN says around 100 people, including 50 children, were living there at the time of the collapse. Basal said that despite everyone pulled out so far, close to 100 people remained under the rubble.

“Civil defense teams are still working to pull the dead from the rubble,” Basal told Al Jazeera.

Lack of equipment slows the search

Rescue teams in Gaza have no heavy machinery, so much of the work is being done by hand. Gaza City’s Civil Defense director, Raed al Dahshan, said there is reason for hope.

“We can still hear voices under the rubble, so there is hope we will find people,” Al Dahshan told NBC News.

Gaza’s mayor, Yahya al Sarraj, warned that the municipal service, together with civil defense, has been “paralyzed” despite every effort to pull people from the rubble. He told Al Jazeera:

“This is not the first building to collapse, and we fear it will not be the last.”

According to both sources, foreign teams have also joined the effort on the ground. Egypt has sent heavy machinery, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has deployed its own equipment and workers, and the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are sending humanitarian aid.

The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Ramiz Alakbarov, said he was deeply moved by news of people trapped under the rubble.

“I am deeply moved by reports of people trapped under the rubble,” Alakbarov said in a statement carried by UN News.

The bigger picture: thousands of buildings at risk

This collapse is not an isolated case. According to NBC, around 2,000 damaged buildings in Gaza are currently housing families with no other safe place to live, and another roughly 400 buildings are at risk of collapsing in the near future. Al Jazeera adds that Israel is restricting the entry of heavy machinery and construction materials needed for repairs, while Israel says those restrictions are meant to keep the equipment out of the hands of armed groups.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, NBC reports, the territory has accumulated around 61 million tons of rubble and debris. Since the ceasefire took effect in October 2025, more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, while the Israeli military says four Israeli soldiers have died in the same period.

With the rainy season approaching, aid to Gaza is becoming even more urgent. Alakbarov called for the urgent approval of heavy machinery, specialized equipment, motor oil and fuel needed for search and rescue operations, saying tents, tarpaulins and other essential supplies must arrive in the coming weeks. As the search through the rubble of the collapsed building continues, Gaza’s mayor warns that more such collapses can be expected in the days ahead, with hundreds of damaged buildings still standing and inhabited.