JERUSALEM — The al-Saada tower in Gaza City was damaged by an Israeli airstrike nearly three years ago. But eight families stayed in the six-story apartment building. With even tents scarce in Gaza, they had nowhere else to go.
Early Wednesday, the building suddenly collapsed.
Rescue workers searched the twisted steel, shattered glass and rubble for survivors. Lacking life detection equipment, the workers strained to hear their cries. With no heavy machinery, they dug with their hands.
Over 15 hours, the civil defense workers and volunteers managed to pull 22 survivors from the wreckage, authorities say. But 21 people were killed and 14 injured.
The catastrophe was a reminder of not only the destructiveness of Israeli bombing during its war on Hamas, but also the depth of the continuing privation in Gaza today.
Nearly a year since the sides agreed to a ceasefire, much of the population in Gaza remains effectively homeless. Many Gazans have remained in homes now unsafe for habitation. Israeli restrictions on imports mean emergency responders lack even basic equipment, hampering search efforts when disaster strikes, as it did on al-Sinna Street.
The al-Saada tower, home to 80 people, began groaning shortly after 2 a.m. Wednesday. Cracks emerged and spread. Finally, the structure crumbled in a roar of broken concrete and a cloud of dust.
Tarek Ghanem, a 41-year-old construction contractor who is homeless himself, ran from his tent 100 yards away to begin scrabbling through the debris. Residents lay trapped under slabs of concrete, pleading for help.
“I saw women and children alive,” Ghanem said. “If the civil defense had the needed equipment, they would have saved them.”
Gazan civil defense contacted international relief agencies to request equipment including buzzsaws, electrical cables and protective gloves, according to an official from a major international humanitarian agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. Many such products are restricted by the Israeli military, which says it needs to closely control the import of dual-use items — those that could serve military as well as civilian purposes. Requests for heavy construction equipment, in particular, are often rejected; Israeli officials say Hamas fighters could use it to dig tunnels.
As the toll of the building collapse became apparent on Thursday, U.N. and other humanitarian officials called for more equipment to be allowed into Gaza. Jaco Cilliers, the special representative for the U.N. Development Program in Palestine, said search-and-rescue teams required lights, front loaders, excavators, cranes and trucks, as well as generators, drills, wedges, cutters, cameras and other tools.
“Lack of access to this machinery and equipment means lives lost,” Cilliers said. “In a situation where a residential building collapses, every second counts.”
The Israeli military agency that manages the flow of goods into Gaza said heavy machinery is not currently authorized, “in accordance with the policy of the political echelon.”
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not respond to a request for comment.
The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, the military agency, said it does not enforce a blanket ban on dual-use products, and allows goods such as X-ray machines. It said it did not receive requests for heavy machinery for the building that collapsed Wednesday.
“Israel exercises heightened caution and offers international organizations, as well as local merchants on an individual basis, alternative solutions that enable humanitarian needs to be addressed,” COGAT said in a statement, “without allowing the Hamas terrorist organization to cynically exploit humanitarian aid to build up its capabilities.”
The challenges confronting search-and-rescue teams are not new. They emerge whenever an Israeli airstrike topples a building.
“Our equipment is very basic: it consists of our hands, a small hammer and a pickax,” said Noah Shagnobi, a member of the Gaza City civil defense team. “This is the biggest problem we have been talking about for years.”
The Israeli restrictions affect other operations, too. The civil defense, which has been removing rubble to recover human remains, acquired a second bulldozer only recently, according to the humanitarian official.
Amid a lack of spare parts, two-thirds of Gaza’s 240 garbage trucks are out of service, Cilliers said, hindering waste disposal in the trash-strewn strip. His U.N. agency, which works on both waste and rubble removal, is also struggling to acquire functioning debris crushers, he said, further slowing the enclave’s cleanup and reconstruction effort.
The building collapse highlighted another problem: the lack of housing.
Hamas-led fighters streamed out of the enclave on Oct. 7, 2023, in a surprise attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel. Israel responded with a campaign of airstrikes and shelling that has killed more than 73,800 people in Gaza and destroyed or damaged more than 80 percent of its buildings, according to the U.N. Satellite Center.
The sides agreed to the ceasefire in October, but Israel has continued to pound the Strip, killing more than 1,000 people over the past 11 months.
U.N. officials estimate that 330,000 families still lack housing. Those living in tents, they say, face flooding and the spread of infectious diseases, particularly during the rainy winter season.
With that season now approaching, many are choosing to stay in structurally unsound buildings that Gazan officials warn might be further compromised by wind and rain.
Beisan al-Mabhouh, who lived next to the collapsed tower, said its residents were “warned more than once” that it could collapse. But given the shortage of homes and even tents, she said, “people did not find another alternative.”
Mabhouh, 33, was jolted awake Wednesday by the sound of panicked screams and the clatter of falling debris. At first, she said, she thought Israel had bombed something nearby.
On Thursday, she weighed whether to leave her own building, which has also sustained damage during the war. But she, her husband and their three sons had already been displaced once, from the border city of Rafah in 2024, and she was afraid of moving again. “There can be bombing at any moment,” Mabhouh said. “We don’t see that there is a ceasefire.”
She decided she would take her chances inside her damaged building.
“According to the engineer’s assessment,” she said, “it is safe for living.”
Hassan Esdodi in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, contributed to this report.
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