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Strong cold-season gusts brought walls down upon fragile tents housing people uprooted by war in Gaza, killing at least four people. These deaths highlights the dangerous living conditions that continue after over two years of intense airstrikes and severe lack of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Provides No Respite from Harsh Weather

Although a ceasefire has been in effect from last fall, aid groups report that residents broadly lack the adequate housing required to survive frequent winter storms.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which took in the victims, reported on this week that the dead were a pair of adult females, a girl, and a man.

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

"The world has allowed us to experience death in every possible way," said Bassel Hamouda after the burial. "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 Shelter Collapse

According to the medical center, three people of a single household — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage relative, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 26-foot high wall fell onto their tent in a area near the sea of Gaza City. No fewer than 5 additional people were hurt in the event.

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

Humanitarian Distribution and Continuing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were handing out tents, tarps, warm covers and clothing as well as nutrition and hygiene supplies across Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of Palestinians reside in makeshift tents since their houses were reduced to rubble over the course of the war. Aid groups contend not enough building supplies are entering Gaza during the ceasefire.

Casualty Figures After the Truce

Local health authorities, part of the administration, reports over 440 people have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their bodies taken to hospitals after the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry maintains comprehensive casualty records that are seen as largely accurate by UN agencies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children's fund, stated on Tuesday that at least 100 minors under the age of 18 – sixty males and 40 girls – had been lost their lives after the ceasefire started because of armed actions, such as drone strikes, air raids, artillery fire and use of live ammunition. Those figures, he said, reflected cases where enough information had been gathered to warrant documentation, but the overall count is believed to be higher. He added that many hundreds of minors had been injured.

"Although 'bombings and gunfire have slowed' under the truce, they have not stopped," Elder informed reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from the Strip. "Therefore what the world now calls calm would be viewed as a crisis in any other place," he concluded.

Third Winter of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of over two million individuals has been struggling to fend off the freezing temperatures and bad weather at bay while facing lack of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is urgently required throughout the winter months. This marks the 3rd cold season after the conflict between Israel and the group began on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and murdered around twelve hundred individuals and took hostage 251 others into Gaza.

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