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Strong winter gusts brought walls down onto flimsy tents housing Palestinians displaced by war in Gaza, killing no fewer than four individuals. These deaths highlights the perilous living conditions that persist after over 24 months of intense bombardment and severe lack of aid.

Truce Offers Little Respite from Severe Weather

While a truce has been active since October, aid groups report that Palestinians do not have the sufficient shelter necessary to survive recurring winter storms.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the bodies, said on Tuesday that the dead include a pair of adult females, a young female, and a man.

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

"International actors has enabled us to witness death in all its forms," stated Bassel Hamouda following the funeral. "It’s true the shelling may have paused for now, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Crushed in Tent Collapse

According to the medical center, 3 people of a single household — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old relative, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed onto their dwelling in a coastal area of Gaza City. No fewer than 5 additional people were hurt in the event.

Family members on Tuesday began clearing the rubble that had entombed their family and rebuilding the tent shelters for those who remained.

Aid Efforts and Ongoing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, tarps, blankets and clothing as well as nutrition and hygiene supplies across Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.

The majority of Palestinians live in improvised tents because their houses were reduced to rubble over the course of the war. Humanitarian organizations contend an insufficient amount of shelter materials are entering Gaza under the ceasefire.

Fatality Figures Since the Ceasefire

Local health authorities, which is part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 people have been killed by gunfire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The authority keeps comprehensive fatality data that are considered largely accurate by UN agencies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children's fund, stated on that day that no fewer than one hundred children below eighteen years old – sixty males and forty girls – had been lost their lives since the ceasefire began because of military operations, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. These numbers, he explained, represented incidents where enough information had been compiled to warrant recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He noted that many hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"While 'explosions and shootings have decreased' under the truce, they have not stopped," the spokesperson told journalists at a UN briefing in the Swiss city by video link from the Strip. "So what the world now terms quiet would be viewed as a crisis in any other place," he said.

Another Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of more than 2 million people has been fighting to keep the freezing temperatures and storms at bay while enduring shortages of assistance and a absence of sturdier transitional shelter, which is urgently required throughout the colder season. It’s the 3rd cold season after the war involving Israel and the group started on 7 October 2023, when fighters stormed into Israeli territory and murdered around twelve hundred individuals and took hostage 251 others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports over 71,400 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.