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Strong cold-season winds brought walls down onto flimsy shelters housing Palestinians uprooted by conflict in Gaza, killing at least 4 individuals. These deaths underscores the dangerous situation that continue after over 24 months of intense bombardment and critical lack of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers No Respite from Severe Weather

Although a ceasefire has been active since October, humanitarian organizations state that Palestinians do not have the adequate shelter required to survive recurring winter storms.

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

Separately, the local health authority stated on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy succumbed of extreme cold overnight.

"The world has enabled us to experience death in every possible way," stated Bassel Hamouda following the funeral. "It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Tent Collapse

As per the medical center, three members of a one family — elderly a man, his teenage granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 26-foot high wall collapsed onto their dwelling in a coastal area of the city. No fewer than five others were hurt in the incident.

Their relatives on Tuesday began clearing the rubble that had entombed their family and reconstructing the tent shelters for those who remained.

Humanitarian Distribution and Continuing Emergency

The UN and its aid organization allies were handing out shelter kits, plastic sheeting, warm covers and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene supplies throughout Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

The majority of Palestinians reside in improvised shelters because their homes were turned into rubble over the course of the hostilities. Aid groups contend not enough shelter materials are reaching Gaza during the truce.

Casualty Numbers After the Ceasefire

Local health authorities, which is part of the Hamas-run government, reports over four hundred and forty individuals have been killed by gunfire and their remains taken to hospitals since the truce went into effect. The ministry keeps detailed fatality records that are considered generally reliable by UN agencies and outside analysts.

James Elder, representing the UN children's fund, stated on that day that no fewer than one hundred children below eighteen years old – sixty boys and forty females – had been killed after the truce began due to armed actions, including drone strikes, airstrikes, artillery fire and employment of bullets. Those figures, he said, reflected incidents where enough information had been compiled to warrant documentation, but the overall count is believed to be greater. He added that hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"While 'bombings and gunfire have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not stopped," the spokesperson told journalists at a press conference in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "So what the world now calls calm would be considered a crisis in any other place," he concluded.

Another Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s population of more than two million individuals has been fighting to fend off the freezing temperatures and storms away while enduring lack of humanitarian aid and a lack of sturdier transitional shelter, which is urgently required during the winter months. This marks the third cold season since the conflict between the state and the group started on a date in late 2023, when militants attacked Israeli territory and killed around twelve hundred individuals and took hostage 251 others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports over 71,400 Palestinians have been fatally injured in the subsequent military campaign.