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Powerful cold-season gusts brought walls down upon flimsy shelters sheltering people uprooted by conflict in Gaza, killing at least 4 individuals. These deaths underscores the dangerous living conditions that continue after more than 24 months of devastating bombardment and severe lack of aid.

Ceasefire Provides Little Relief from Severe Weather

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

Officials at Shifa hospital, which received the victims, said on this week that the deceased include two women, a girl, and a male adult.

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

"International actors has allowed us to experience death in all its forms," said a family member following the funeral. "It’s true the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Tent Collapse

According to the medical center, 3 people of a single family — 72-year-old a man, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 26-foot high wall fell onto their tent in a area near the sea of the city. At least five others were injured in the incident.

Family members on Tuesday began removing the debris that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the tent shelters for those who remained.

Humanitarian Distribution and Ongoing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were distributing shelter kits, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and sanitation supplies throughout Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of the population live in improvised shelters since their homes were turned into rubble during the war. Humanitarian organizations say not enough building supplies are reaching Gaza during the truce.

Casualty Figures Since the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, says over 440 individuals have been fatally shot by gunfire and their remains brought to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The authority keeps comprehensive casualty data that are considered largely accurate by UN agencies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children's fund, stated on that day that at least one hundred minors under the age of 18 – sixty boys and forty girls – had been killed after the ceasefire started because of armed actions, including drone strikes, air raids, tank shelling and employment of bullets. Those figures, he said, reflected incidents where sufficient information had been gathered to warrant documentation, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He noted that hundreds of children had been wounded.

"Although 'explosions and shootings have slowed' under the truce, they have not ceased," the spokesperson informed journalists at a UN briefing in the Swiss city by video from Gaza City. "So what the world now calls calm would be considered a catastrophe in any other place," he concluded.

Third Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s population of more than two million individuals has been fighting to keep the cold weather and storms away while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is urgently required throughout the colder season. It’s the 3rd winter after the conflict involving the state and the group began on 7 October 2023, when fighters attacked Israeli territory and killed around twelve hundred individuals and abducted 251 others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry says more than 71,400 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent military campaign.