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Strong cold-season winds brought walls down upon fragile tents sheltering people uprooted by war in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 individuals. This tragedy highlights the dangerous living conditions that continue after more than two years of devastating airstrikes and critical shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers Little Relief from Severe Weather

While a truce has been in effect since October, aid groups report that residents broadly lack the sufficient housing necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which took in the bodies, reported on this week that the dead include two women, a young female, and a man.

Separately, the local health authority announced on the same day that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of hypothermia during the night.

"The world has allowed us to witness death in every possible way," stated Bassel Hamouda following the burial. "It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have seen every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Shelter Collapse

As per the medical center, three members of a single household — elderly a man, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an 26-foot high wall collapsed on top of their dwelling in a area near the sea of Gaza City. At least five additional people were injured in the incident.

Their relatives on Tuesday began clearing the rubble that had entombed their loved ones and reconstructing the temporary homes for those who remained.

Humanitarian Distribution and Continuing Emergency

The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out shelter kits, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene items throughout Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of the population live in makeshift tents because their houses were reduced to rubble over the course of the war. Humanitarian organizations contend an insufficient amount of shelter materials are reaching Gaza under the truce.

Fatality Figures Since the Truce

Local health authorities, which is part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 people have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their bodies taken to hospitals since the truce went into effect. The authority keeps detailed fatality records that are considered generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on that day that no fewer than 100 children under the age of 18 – sixty males and 40 girls – had been lost their lives since the ceasefire started due to armed actions, including unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, tank shelling and employment of live ammunition. These numbers, he said, represented cases where enough information had been gathered to warrant recording, but the overall count is believed to be greater. He added that many hundreds of minors had been injured.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have slowed' under the ceasefire, they have not ceased," the spokesperson informed reporters at a press conference in Geneva by video from the Strip. "Therefore what the international community now calls calm would be considered a crisis anywhere else," he concluded.

Another Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s population of over 2 million individuals has been fighting to fend off the freezing temperatures and storms away while enduring lack of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial transitional shelter, which is urgently required throughout the colder season. It’s the 3rd winter since the conflict between Israel and the group began on 7 October 2023, when fighters attacked Israeli territory and murdered approximately 1,200 people and took hostage 251 more into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports more than 71,400 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent retaliatory offensive.