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Strong cold-season gusts caused walls to collapse onto fragile tents sheltering people displaced by conflict in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 people. These deaths highlights the dangerous living conditions that continue after over two years of intense bombardment and severe lack of aid.

Truce Provides No Respite from Harsh Elements

While a ceasefire has been active from last fall, humanitarian organizations state that Palestinians broadly lack the sufficient housing required to withstand frequent winter storms.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which received the bodies, said on Tuesday that the deceased include two women, a young female, and a man.

Separately, the local health authority stated on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy succumbed of hypothermia during the night.

"International actors has enabled us to experience death in all its forms," said a family member after the burial. "It’s true the shelling may have paused for now, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Tent Collapse

As per Shifa hospital, 3 members of a one household — elderly a man, his 15-year-old relative, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed onto their tent in a area near the sea of the city. No fewer than 5 additional people were hurt in the event.

Family members on that day started removing the debris that had entombed their loved ones and reconstructing the tent shelters for survivors.

Aid Efforts and Ongoing Emergency

The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out shelter kits, plastic sheeting, warm covers and clothing as well as food and sanitation items across Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of Palestinians live in makeshift tents because their houses were reduced to ruins over the course of the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations say not enough building supplies are entering Gaza during the truce.

Fatality Numbers Since the Truce

Local health authorities, which is part of the Hamas-run government, reports more than 440 individuals have been fatally shot by gunfire and their remains taken to hospitals after the ceasefire went into effect. The authority keeps comprehensive casualty records that are considered largely accurate by UN agencies and independent experts.

James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children's fund, stated on that day that no fewer than 100 children below eighteen years old – 60 males and 40 girls – had been lost their lives since the ceasefire started because of military operations, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, tank shelling and employment of bullets. These numbers, he said, represented incidents where enough details had been gathered to justify recording, but the total toll is believed to be higher. He noted that many hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"While 'explosions and gunfire have decreased' under the truce, they have not stopped," Elder informed reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video link from the Strip. "Therefore what the international community now calls calm would be considered a crisis in any other place," he concluded.

Third Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s population of over two million individuals has been struggling to keep the cold weather and bad weather at bay while enduring shortages of assistance and a lack of sturdier transitional shelter, which is badly required throughout the colder season. This marks the third cold season after the war between Israel and the group started on a date in late 2023, when fighters attacked Israeli territory and killed approximately 1,200 people and abducted two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.

The local health authority reports over seventy-one thousand four hundred people have been killed in the subsequent military campaign.