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Strong winter winds caused walls to collapse onto fragile tents housing people uprooted by war in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 individuals. These deaths highlights the dangerous situation that continue after over two years of intense airstrikes and severe shortages of aid.

Truce Offers Little Respite from Harsh Elements

Although a truce has been in effect since last fall, aid groups report that Palestinians broadly lack the sufficient shelter required to survive recurring winter storms.

Medical staff at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the victims, reported on Tuesday that the deceased were a pair of adult females, a girl, and a man.

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

"International actors has allowed us to witness loss of life in every possible way," said a family member after the funeral. "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."

Family Buried in Shelter Collapse

As per the medical center, three people of a single family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage relative, and his son's wife — were killed when an eight-metre tall wall fell on top of their tent in a coastal area of the city. No fewer than 5 additional people were injured in the incident.

Their relatives on that day started removing the rubble that had entombed their loved ones and rebuilding the temporary homes for survivors.

Aid Efforts and Continuing Emergency

The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out tents, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothing as well as nutrition and sanitation supplies throughout Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of the population reside in makeshift shelters because their houses were reduced to ruins during the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations contend an insufficient amount of shelter materials are entering Gaza during the truce.

Casualty Figures After the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the administration, says over 440 individuals have been killed by gunfire and their bodies brought to hospitals after the ceasefire began. The authority keeps detailed fatality data that are considered largely accurate by international bodies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children's fund, said on Tuesday that no fewer than one hundred minors below eighteen years old – sixty boys and forty females – had been lost their lives after the ceasefire started because of military operations, such as drone strikes, air raids, artillery fire and employment of live ammunition. These numbers, he explained, reflected cases where enough details had been gathered to justify documentation, but the total toll is believed to be greater. He added that many hundreds of minors had been injured.

"While 'explosions and gunfire have slowed' under the ceasefire, they have not stopped," the spokesperson informed journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from the Strip. "So what the world now terms quiet would be considered a crisis in any other place," he said.

Third Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of over 2 million individuals has been struggling to fend off the freezing temperatures and storms away while facing shortages of assistance and a lack of more substantial transitional shelter, which is urgently required during the colder season. It’s the 3rd cold season after the conflict between Israel and Hamas started on 7 October 2023, when fighters attacked Israeli territory and murdered approximately twelve hundred people and abducted 251 more into Gaza.

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