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Strong cold-season winds brought walls down onto fragile tents sheltering Palestinians uprooted by war in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 people. These deaths underscores the perilous living conditions that continue after more than two years of devastating bombardment and severe shortages of aid.

Truce Offers Little Respite from Harsh Weather

While a truce has been in effect since last fall, humanitarian organizations state that Palestinians broadly lack the adequate housing required to survive frequent winter storms.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which received the victims, said on Tuesday that the deceased were two women, a young female, and a man.

In a separate incident, the local health authority stated on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of extreme cold during the night.

"International actors has allowed us to experience loss of life in every possible way," stated Bassel Hamouda following the funeral. "While it is correct the bombing may have paused for now, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Crushed in Tent Collapse

According to the medical center, three people of a one household — elderly a man, his 15-year-old relative, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an 26-foot tall wall collapsed onto their dwelling in a area near the sea of Gaza City. At least 5 additional people were injured in the incident.

Their relatives on Tuesday started removing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.

Humanitarian Efforts and Continuing Crisis

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were distributing tents, plastic sheeting, warm covers and clothing as well as food and hygiene supplies throughout Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of Palestinians reside in improvised tents because their homes were reduced to rubble during the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations say not enough building supplies are reaching Gaza during the truce.

Casualty Numbers After the Ceasefire

Local health authorities, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 people have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their bodies taken to hospitals after the ceasefire went into effect. The authority keeps detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by international bodies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on Tuesday that no fewer than 100 children below eighteen years old – sixty males and 40 girls – had been killed since the ceasefire began because of military operations, such as drone strikes, airstrikes, artillery fire and employment of bullets. Those figures, he explained, reflected incidents where enough details had been gathered to justify documentation, but the overall count is expected to be higher. He added that many hundreds of minors had been injured.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," Elder informed journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from the Strip. "So what the international community now calls calm would be viewed as a catastrophe anywhere else," he said.

Third Winter of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of over 2 million individuals has been fighting to fend off the cold weather and bad weather away while enduring shortages of assistance and a lack of more substantial transitional shelter, which is urgently needed throughout the winter months. This marks the 3rd cold season since the conflict between the state and the group started on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and murdered around 1,200 people and took hostage 251 more into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry says more than seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent retaliatory offensive.