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Powerful cold-season winds caused walls to collapse onto fragile tents housing people uprooted by conflict in Gaza, claiming the lives of no fewer than 4 people. These deaths highlights the perilous situation that persist after over 24 months of intense bombardment and severe shortages of aid.

Ceasefire Offers No Respite from Severe Elements

Although a ceasefire has been active since last fall, aid groups state that residents broadly lack the adequate shelter necessary to withstand recurring cold-weather events.

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

Separately, the Gaza health ministry stated on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of extreme cold overnight.

"International actors has enabled us to witness loss of life in all its forms," said a family member following the funeral. "While it is correct the bombing may have paused for now, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Buried in Shelter Collapse

As per Shifa hospital, 3 members of a single household — elderly a man, his teenage relative, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an 26-foot high wall collapsed onto their dwelling in a coastal area of the city. No fewer than 5 others were hurt in the incident.

Family members on Tuesday started removing the debris that had buried their family and rebuilding the temporary homes for survivors.

Humanitarian Efforts and Continuing Emergency

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

Most of Palestinians reside in makeshift shelters since their homes were reduced to ruins over the course of the war. Humanitarian organizations say an insufficient amount of building supplies are reaching Gaza during the truce.

Casualty Numbers After the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, part of the administration, reports over 440 people have been killed by gunfire and their bodies brought to hospitals after the ceasefire began. The ministry keeps detailed fatality records that are seen as largely accurate by UN agencies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on Tuesday that at least one hundred children below eighteen years old – sixty males and forty girls – had been lost their lives since the truce started due to military operations, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, artillery fire and use of bullets. Those figures, he explained, represented incidents where enough information had been gathered to justify recording, but the total toll is believed to be higher. He added that hundreds of children had been injured.

"Although 'bombings and gunfire have slowed' under the truce, they have not stopped," the spokesperson informed journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from Gaza City. "Therefore what the world now calls calm would be considered a crisis in any other place," he said.

Third Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s population of over 2 million people has been struggling to keep the freezing temperatures and bad weather away while facing shortages of assistance and a lack of more substantial transitional shelter, which is badly required throughout the colder season. This marks the 3rd winter since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and murdered approximately 1,200 people and abducted two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority reports more than seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been fatally injured in the subsequent military campaign.