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Strong winter gusts brought walls down onto fragile shelters housing people displaced by conflict in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 people. These deaths highlights the dangerous situation that persist after over two years of devastating bombardment and severe lack of aid.

Truce Provides Little Relief from Harsh Weather

Although a truce has been active since last fall, humanitarian organizations report that Palestinians do not have the sufficient shelter required to survive recurring cold-weather events.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which received the victims, reported on Tuesday that the deceased include a pair of adult females, a young female, and a male adult.

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

"International actors has enabled us to witness death in all its forms," stated a family member after the funeral. "While it is correct the bombing may have paused for now, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Buried in Tent Collapse

According to Shifa hospital, 3 members of a one family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre high wall collapsed onto their tent in a area near the sea of the city. No fewer than 5 additional people were injured in the event.

Family members on that day started removing the rubble that had entombed their family and reconstructing the temporary homes for survivors.

Aid Efforts and Ongoing Emergency

The UN and its aid organization allies were distributing tents, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as nutrition and sanitation supplies throughout Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of the population reside in makeshift tents since their homes were reduced to rubble during the war. Aid groups say an insufficient amount of building supplies are reaching Gaza under the ceasefire.

Fatality Figures After the Truce

Local health authorities, part of the administration, reports over 440 individuals have been killed by Israeli fire and their bodies taken to hospitals since the truce began. The authority keeps detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.

James Elder, representing the UN children's fund, stated on that day that no fewer than one hundred children under the age of 18 – sixty boys and forty females – had been killed since the truce started because of armed actions, such as drone strikes, air raids, artillery fire and use of bullets. These numbers, he explained, represented incidents where enough details had been gathered to warrant recording, but the overall count is expected to be higher. He noted that hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not stopped," Elder informed reporters at a UN briefing in the Swiss city by video from Gaza City. "Therefore what the international community now calls calm would be considered a crisis in any other place," he said.

Another Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of over two million individuals has been struggling to keep the cold weather and bad weather away while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of sturdier temporary housing, which is urgently required during the colder season. This marks the 3rd cold season after the war involving the state and Hamas started on a date in late 2023, when fighters attacked southern Israel and murdered around 1,200 individuals and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports over seventy-one thousand four hundred people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.