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Powerful cold-season gusts caused walls to collapse upon fragile shelters housing Palestinians uprooted by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least four people. These deaths underscores the dangerous living conditions that persist after over two years of intense airstrikes and severe shortages of aid.

Truce Offers Little Relief from Harsh Elements

Although a truce has been active from October, aid groups state that Palestinians do not have the adequate housing required to withstand frequent winter storms.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which received the victims, reported on this week that the deceased were a pair of adult females, a girl, and a man.

Separately, the local health authority stated on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight.

"International actors has allowed us to witness death in all its forms," stated Bassel Hamouda following the funeral. "While it is correct the bombing 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

According to the medical center, 3 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 tall wall collapsed on top of their tent in a area near the sea of Gaza City. At least five others were injured in the event.

Family members on Tuesday started clearing the debris that had buried their loved ones and reconstructing the temporary homes for survivors.

Aid Distribution and Continuing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were distributing shelter kits, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene supplies across Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of the population reside in makeshift tents because their houses were reduced to ruins during the hostilities. Aid groups contend an insufficient amount of shelter materials are entering Gaza under the truce.

Casualty Figures Since the Truce

Local health authorities, which is part of the administration, reports over 440 people have been killed by gunfire and their bodies taken to hospitals after the ceasefire began. The authority keeps comprehensive casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and outside analysts.

James Elder, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on that day that no fewer than one hundred children under the age of 18 – sixty boys and 40 girls – had been killed since the ceasefire began due to military operations, such as drone strikes, airstrikes, artillery fire and use of bullets. These numbers, he explained, represented cases where enough information had been compiled to justify recording, but the total toll is expected to be greater. He added that hundreds of minors had been injured.

"While 'explosions and gunfire have slowed' under the ceasefire, they have not stopped," Elder told journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video link from the Strip. "So what the world now calls calm would be considered a catastrophe anywhere else," he concluded.

Third Winter of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of more than two million individuals has been fighting to fend off the cold weather and bad weather at bay while enduring shortages of assistance and a absence of more substantial transitional shelter, which is badly needed throughout the winter months. It’s the 3rd cold season after the war between the state and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when militants attacked southern Israel and killed approximately twelve hundred people and took hostage 251 more into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports more than 71,400 people have been fatally injured in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.