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Powerful winter winds caused walls to collapse upon flimsy shelters sheltering people uprooted by conflict in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least 4 individuals. These deaths highlights the perilous living conditions that persist after over 24 months of intense airstrikes and critical shortages of aid.

Truce Offers Little Respite from Severe Elements

While a truce has been active since October, aid groups report that Palestinians broadly lack the sufficient shelter necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which took in the victims, reported on Tuesday that the deceased were two women, a girl, and a man.

In a separate incident, the local health authority stated on Tuesday that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of hypothermia overnight.

"International actors has allowed us to witness loss of life in all its forms," stated Bassel Hamouda following the burial. "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."

Family Crushed in Shelter Collapse

According to the medical center, 3 members of a single family — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an 26-foot tall wall fell on top of their tent in a coastal area of the city. At least 5 additional people were injured in the event.

Family members on Tuesday began clearing the debris that had buried their family and reconstructing the temporary homes for those who remained.

Humanitarian Distribution and Continuing Crisis

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, tarps, blankets and clothing as well as food and sanitation supplies across Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of the population reside in improvised tents since their houses were reduced to ruins over the course of the war. Humanitarian organizations say not enough building supplies are entering Gaza during the ceasefire.

Fatality Figures Since the Ceasefire

Local health authorities, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 individuals have been fatally shot by gunfire and their remains brought to hospitals after the truce went into effect. The authority keeps comprehensive casualty data that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on that day that at least 100 minors below eighteen years old – sixty boys and forty girls – had been killed after the ceasefire started because of armed actions, including drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and use of bullets. These numbers, he said, reflected cases where enough details had been gathered to justify recording, but the overall count is expected to be higher. He noted that hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"Although 'bombings and gunfire have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not stopped," the spokesperson told reporters at a press conference in Geneva by video from the Strip. "Therefore what the world now calls calm would be considered a crisis anywhere else," he concluded.

Another Winter of Hardship

Gaza’s population of more than two million individuals has been fighting to fend off the freezing temperatures and bad weather away while facing shortages of assistance and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly required during the colder season. It’s the 3rd cold season after the war between the state and Hamas started on 7 October 2023, when fighters stormed into Israeli territory and killed around twelve hundred people and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority reports over seventy-one thousand four hundred people have been fatally injured in the subsequent military campaign.