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Strong cold-season winds caused walls to collapse onto flimsy tents housing Palestinians displaced by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least four people. These deaths highlights the perilous living conditions that persist after over two years of devastating airstrikes and critical lack of aid.

Truce Provides No Respite from Harsh Elements

Although a ceasefire has been in effect since October, humanitarian organizations state that Palestinians broadly lack the adequate housing necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which received the victims, reported on Tuesday that the deceased include a pair of adult females, a girl, and a male adult.

Separately, the local health authority stated on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight.

"International actors has allowed us to experience death in all its forms," said Bassel Hamouda after the burial. "It’s true the shelling may have paused for now, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Shelter Collapse

As per Shifa hospital, 3 members of a one household — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage relative, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an 26-foot tall wall fell onto their dwelling in a area near the sea of the city. No fewer than five additional people were injured in the incident.

Their relatives on that day began removing the debris that had buried their loved ones and reconstructing the tent shelters for survivors.

Aid Distribution and Continuing Emergency

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

Most of the population live in makeshift shelters because their homes were turned into ruins during the war. Aid groups say an insufficient amount of shelter materials are reaching Gaza under the ceasefire.

Casualty Figures Since the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, part of the administration, reports more than four hundred and forty individuals have been fatally shot by gunfire and their remains taken to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The authority keeps detailed casualty records that are considered generally reliable by international bodies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children's fund, said on that day that at least one hundred minors below eighteen years old – 60 males and 40 girls – had been killed since the truce began because of military operations, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, artillery fire and use of bullets. These numbers, he explained, represented incidents where sufficient details had been gathered to warrant recording, but the overall count is expected to be higher. He noted that many hundreds of minors had been injured.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not stopped," the spokesperson informed reporters at a UN briefing in the Swiss city by video link from Gaza City. "So what the international community now calls quiet would be viewed as a catastrophe anywhere else," he concluded.

Third Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s population of over 2 million individuals has been fighting to fend off the freezing temperatures and bad weather away while enduring lack of assistance and a absence of more substantial transitional shelter, which is badly required during the colder season. It’s the 3rd cold season after the war between Israel and Hamas began on a date in late 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and murdered around twelve hundred people and abducted 251 more into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry says over 71,400 Palestinians have been fatally injured in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.