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Powerful cold-season winds caused walls to collapse upon fragile shelters sheltering Palestinians displaced by conflict in Gaza, killing at least four individuals. This tragedy highlights the perilous situation that continue after over two years of intense bombardment and critical shortages of aid.

Truce Offers Little Respite from Severe Weather

Although a truce has been in effect from October, humanitarian organizations report that residents broadly lack the sufficient housing necessary to survive frequent winter storms.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which received the victims, said on Tuesday that the dead include a pair of adult females, a young female, and a male adult.

Separately, the local health authority stated 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 all its forms," stated a family member following the funeral. "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 Shelter Collapse

As per the medical center, three members of a one household — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage relative, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre tall wall fell onto their tent in a area near the sea of the city. At least 5 additional people were injured in the incident.

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

Humanitarian Distribution and Ongoing Crisis

The UN and its aid organization allies were handing out tents, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as food and sanitation supplies across Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

The majority of the population reside in improvised shelters because their homes were turned into ruins during the war. Aid groups contend not enough building supplies are entering Gaza during the ceasefire.

Casualty Numbers Since the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, part of the administration, reports over 440 individuals have been killed by Israeli fire and their remains taken to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The authority keeps comprehensive casualty data that are considered largely accurate by international bodies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on that day that no fewer than 100 children under the age of 18 – sixty males and 40 females – had been lost their lives after the truce started due to military operations, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, tank shelling and employment of bullets. Those figures, he explained, represented cases where sufficient information had been compiled to warrant documentation, but the overall count is expected to be greater. He added that hundreds of children had been wounded.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have slowed' under the ceasefire, they have not stopped," the spokesperson told reporters at a press conference in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "Therefore what the international community now terms quiet would be viewed as a crisis anywhere else," he concluded.

Third Winter of Hardship

Gaza’s population of more than two million people has been fighting to fend off the freezing temperatures and bad weather at bay while facing shortages of assistance and a lack of sturdier temporary housing, which is badly needed during the colder season. It’s the third cold season after the conflict involving the state and the group started on a date in late 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and murdered around twelve hundred people and abducted two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.

The local health authority reports over seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.