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Powerful winter gusts caused walls to collapse upon flimsy shelters sheltering people displaced by war in Gaza, killing no fewer than four people. These deaths underscores the dangerous situation that persist after over two years of devastating airstrikes and severe shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers Little Respite from Harsh Weather

While a truce has been active from last fall, aid groups report that residents do not have the sufficient housing necessary to survive recurring winter storms.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which received the victims, said on Tuesday that the deceased were two women, a girl, and a man.

In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry announced on the same day that a 12-month-old infant died of hypothermia overnight.

"International actors has enabled us to experience death in all its forms," stated Bassel Hamouda after the funeral. "While it is correct the bombing may have paused for now, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Tent Collapse

As per Shifa hospital, 3 people of a single household — 72-year-old a man, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 26-foot tall wall collapsed on top of their tent in a coastal area of the city. No fewer than 5 additional people were injured in the event.

Family members on Tuesday began removing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the temporary homes for survivors.

Aid Efforts and Continuing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, plastic sheeting, warm covers and clothes as well as food and sanitation supplies throughout Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

The majority of Palestinians live in improvised tents because their houses were turned into rubble during the war. Aid groups contend not enough shelter materials are entering Gaza under the truce.

Fatality Figures After the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the administration, says over 440 individuals have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their remains taken to hospitals since the ceasefire began. The ministry maintains comprehensive fatality data that are seen as generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on Tuesday that no fewer than 100 minors under the age of 18 – sixty boys and forty females – had been killed after the ceasefire began due to military operations, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, artillery fire and employment of live ammunition. Those figures, he explained, represented cases where sufficient information had been compiled to warrant recording, but the overall count is expected to be higher. He added that many hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"Although 'explosions and shootings have slowed' during the truce, they have not stopped," Elder told reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video link from the Strip. "Therefore what the international community now calls calm would be considered a catastrophe in any other place," he said.

Another Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of over two million people has been fighting to fend off the freezing temperatures and storms away while facing lack of assistance and a absence of more substantial transitional shelter, which is urgently required throughout the colder season. This marks the third cold season after the war between Israel and Hamas started on a date in late 2023, when fighters stormed into southern Israel and murdered around 1,200 individuals and abducted 251 more into Gaza.

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