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Strong winter gusts caused walls to collapse upon fragile shelters housing people displaced by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of no fewer than four people. These deaths highlights the dangerous situation that persist after over 24 months of intense airstrikes and critical shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers Little Relief from Severe Weather

While a ceasefire has been in effect from October, humanitarian organizations state that residents broadly lack the adequate housing required to withstand frequent winter storms.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which took in the bodies, said on this week that the deceased were a pair of adult females, a young female, and a male adult.

In a separate incident, the local health authority announced on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy succumbed of extreme cold overnight.

"The world has allowed us to witness death in all its forms," stated Bassel Hamouda following the funeral. "While it is correct the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Crushed in Tent Collapse

According to the medical center, three members of a one household — 72-year-old a man, his teenage granddaughter, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an 26-foot tall wall collapsed onto their tent in a area near the sea of Gaza City. At least five others were injured in the incident.

Family members on that day began removing the rubble that had buried their family and reconstructing the tent shelters for survivors.

Aid Distribution and Continuing Emergency

The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out tents, plastic sheeting, warm covers and clothing as well as nutrition and hygiene items throughout Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of the population reside in makeshift tents because their houses were turned into ruins over the course of the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations say an insufficient amount of shelter materials are reaching Gaza under the ceasefire.

Fatality Numbers After the Truce

Local health authorities, which is part of the Hamas-run government, reports more than 440 people have been killed by Israeli fire and their remains taken to hospitals since the ceasefire began. The authority maintains comprehensive fatality data that are seen as largely accurate by international bodies and outside analysts.

James Elder, representing the UN children's fund, said on that day that no fewer than one hundred children below eighteen years old – sixty males and 40 females – had been killed after the truce began due to military operations, such as drone strikes, airstrikes, artillery fire and employment of live ammunition. Those figures, he said, represented cases where enough details had been gathered to warrant documentation, but the total toll is expected to be greater. He added that many hundreds of children had been wounded.

"While 'explosions and shootings have slowed' during the truce, they have not stopped," the spokesperson told journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "Therefore what the world now terms calm would be viewed as a catastrophe in any other place," he said.

Third Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has been struggling to fend off the freezing temperatures and storms away while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a absence of more substantial transitional shelter, which is urgently required throughout the colder season. This marks the 3rd cold season after the conflict between Israel and the group started on a date in late 2023, when fighters stormed into Israeli territory and murdered around 1,200 individuals and abducted two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority says over seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent retaliatory offensive.