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Powerful cold-season gusts brought walls down upon flimsy shelters housing people uprooted by conflict in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 individuals. This tragedy underscores the perilous situation that continue after over 24 months of intense bombardment and severe shortages of aid.

Ceasefire Offers No Respite from Severe Weather

While a truce has been active from last fall, humanitarian organizations report that residents broadly lack the sufficient housing necessary to survive recurring winter storms.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which received the victims, reported on this week that the deceased include two women, a young female, and a male adult.

In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry announced on Tuesday that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of hypothermia during the night.

"The world has enabled us to witness loss of life in every possible way," stated a family member following the burial. "It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Crushed in Tent Collapse

According to Shifa hospital, 3 members of a one household — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his son's wife — were killed when an 26-foot tall wall fell on top of their dwelling in a area near the sea of Gaza City. At least five additional people were injured in the incident.

Family members on that day started removing the rubble that had entombed their loved ones and reconstructing the temporary homes for those who remained.

Humanitarian Distribution and Continuing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were distributing shelter kits, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene items across Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of Palestinians reside in makeshift shelters because their homes were reduced to rubble during the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations say not enough shelter materials are reaching Gaza during the ceasefire.

Casualty Figures After the Truce

Local health authorities, part of the Hamas-run government, says over 440 people have been killed by Israeli fire and their remains taken to hospitals after the truce went into effect. The ministry keeps detailed fatality data that are considered generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on Tuesday that at least one hundred minors below eighteen years old – 60 boys and 40 girls – had been lost their lives since the truce started because of armed actions, including unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, artillery fire and use 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 higher. He added that many hundreds of children had been wounded.

"While 'explosions and gunfire have decreased' during the truce, they have not stopped," Elder told journalists at a press conference in Geneva by video from Gaza City. "So what the international community now calls calm would be considered a crisis in any other place," he said.

Another Winter of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of more than two million people has been fighting to keep the cold weather and storms at bay while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a absence of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly required during the colder season. It’s the 3rd cold season since the conflict involving the state and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when fighters stormed into southern Israel and murdered approximately 1,200 individuals and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry says more than seventy-one thousand four hundred people have been killed in the subsequent military campaign.