UN workers help evacuate stranded Palestinians

More than 5,000 people have been evacuated from flood-damaged homes in northern Gaza and at least one person killed in what the United Nations called "a disaster area". The flooding, caused by four days of torrential rain, was so severe that many homes could only be accessed by rowing boat with water two metres (more than six feet) deep in some places, Reuters reported. "Large swathes of northern Gaza are a disaster area with water as far as the eye can see," the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) that administers refugee camps in the Palestinian territory, said in a statement on Saturday. Severe weather in the form of heavy snowfall also paralysed Palestinian cities such as Hebron in the occupied West Bank, as well as Jerusalem and parts of Israel's northern Galilee. In Gaza, many people were trapped inside homes inundated by rising waters. A 22-year-old Palestinian man died from smoke inhalation on Saturday after lighting a fire to warm his home, a government spokesman said. The Gaza health ministry said 100 other people had been hurt as flood waters damaged poorly built homes in the coastal territory. Among those injured were people who had been hit by objects falling from inundated buildings or had been in car accidents on flooded roads. Chris Gunness, an UNRWA spokesman, said areas near a refugee camp in northern Gaza "have become a massive lake with two-metre-high waters engulfing homes and stranding thousands." Thousands of agency workers were evacuating stranded Palestinians to U.N. shelters, Gunness said.