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Powerful cold-season winds brought walls down onto flimsy shelters sheltering people displaced by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of no fewer than 4 people. These deaths highlights the perilous situation that persist after more than 24 months of intense airstrikes and severe lack of aid.

Ceasefire Provides No Relief from Severe Elements

While a truce has been active from October, aid groups 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 took in the victims, said on this week that the deceased were two women, a girl, and a man.

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

"International actors has allowed us to experience death in every possible way," stated Bassel Hamouda after the funeral. "While it is correct the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have seen every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Tent Collapse

As per the medical center, 3 members of a one household — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old relative, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre high wall collapsed onto their dwelling in a area near the sea of the city. No fewer than five additional people were hurt in the event.

Their relatives on that day began removing the debris that had buried their family and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.

Aid Efforts and Ongoing Emergency

The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out shelter kits, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and sanitation items throughout Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of Palestinians live in improvised tents since their homes were reduced to ruins during the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations say not enough building supplies are reaching Gaza during the truce.

Casualty Numbers After the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, says over 440 individuals have been killed by gunfire and their bodies taken to hospitals since the ceasefire began. The ministry keeps comprehensive fatality records that are considered generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on Tuesday that at least 100 children under the age of 18 – 60 males and forty females – had been lost their lives after the ceasefire started due to armed actions, such as drone strikes, air raids, tank shelling and use of bullets. Those figures, he explained, represented cases where sufficient details had been gathered to warrant documentation, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He added that many hundreds of children had been wounded.

"Although 'explosions and shootings have decreased' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," the spokesperson told reporters at a UN briefing in the Swiss city by video link from Gaza City. "So what the international community now calls quiet would be considered a crisis anywhere else," he concluded.

Third Winter of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of over two million people has been fighting to fend off the freezing temperatures and bad weather at bay while facing shortages of assistance and a lack of sturdier transitional shelter, which is urgently needed during the colder season. This marks the third winter since the conflict between the state and the group started on a date in late 2023, when fighters stormed into southern Israel and murdered around 1,200 people and abducted two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports over 71,400 Palestinians have been fatally injured in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.