The U.N. reported Thursday that a Palestinian boy drowned in floods that swept through a Gaza tent camp, with videos showing rescuers struggling to pull his body from the muddy water by the ankle.

The tragedy highlights the harsh toll winter is taking on a population already battered by two years of war.

Health officials also confirmed the death of another 9-year-old boy in Gaza Thursday, though the circumstances remain unclear.

In the West Bank, Israeli forces conducted a wave of arrests, detaining roughly 50 Palestinians, many from their homes, according to a Palestinian prisoners’ group.

As 2026 begins, the fragile 12-week-old cease-fire between Israel and Hamas has largely halted large-scale Israeli strikes on Gaza.

Yet Palestinians continue to die nearly every day from Israeli fire, and the humanitarian crisis shows no signs of abating.

UNICEF said Thursday that 7-year-old Ata Mai drowned Saturday in severe flooding that engulfed his tent camp in Gaza City.

Mai’s death was the latest child fatality reported in Gaza as storms, cold weather, and flooding worsen already brutal living conditions.

Almost the entire population of more than 2 million people has lost their homes, with most living in squalid tent camps offering little protection from the weather.

UNICEF said Mai had been living with his younger siblings and family in a camp of around 40 tents.

They lost their mother earlier in the war.

Video from Civil Defense teams, shown on Al Jazeera, showed rescuers trying to remove Mai’s body from what appeared to be a pit filled with muddy water, surrounded by the wreckage of bombed buildings.

The rescuers waded into the water, pulling at the boy’s ankle, the only part of his body visible.

Later, his body was shown wrapped in a muddy cloth and loaded into an ambulance.

Over the past weeks, cold winter rains have repeatedly lashed the sprawling tent cities, causing flooding, turning Gaza’s dirt roads into mud, and collapsing buildings damaged in Israeli bombardment.

UNICEF said at least six children, including Mai, have now died from weather-related causes, including a 4-year-old who died in a building collapse.

The Gaza Health Ministry said three children have died of hypothermia.

"Teams visiting displacement camps reported appalling conditions that no child should endure, with many tents blown away or collapsing entirely,” said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa division.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said Israeli troops had arrested at least 50 Palestinians across the West Bank and interrogated many of them overnight.

Most arrests occurred in the Ramallah area, said the group, an official body within the Palestinian Authority.

"These operations were accompanied by widespread raids, abuse and assault against detainees and their families, in addition to extensive acts of vandalism and destruction inside citizens’ homes,” the group alleged.

Israel’s military did not immediately comment on the raid.

The society said Israel has arrested 7,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem this year and 21,000 since the war began Oct. 7, 2023.

The number of arrests from Gaza is not publicly disclosed.

Violence in the West Bank has surged during the war in Gaza, with the Israeli military carrying out large-scale operations that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands.

There has also been a rise in Israeli settler violence and Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

A 9-year-old boy, Youssef Shandaghi, died in Jabaliya in northern Gaza, near the so-called Yellow Line, the cease-fire demarcation between the portion of the Gaza Strip still under Israeli military control and the rest of the territory, where most of the population lives.

Two officials from Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, Director Mohammed Abu Selmiya and Managing Director Rami Mhanna, said the boy was killed by Israeli gunfire from across the Yellow Line.

Abu Selmiya cited a doctor who received Shandaghi’s body.

Israel’s military said it had no knowledge of the incident.

But an uncle said the boy was killed by unexploded ordnance he encountered while playing. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting accounts.

Israeli troops almost daily open fire on Palestinians approaching the Yellow Line, often killing or wounding some, according to medical personnel and witnesses.

The Israeli military says it fires warning shots if someone crosses the line and fires at anyone judged to pose a threat to troops. It has acknowledged that some civilians, including children, have been killed.

Since the cease-fire began, 416 Palestinians have been killed and 1,142 wounded in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry.

The overall Palestinian death toll from the war is at least 71,271.

The ministry is staffed by medical professionals and maintains detailed records considered generally reliable by the international community.