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Powerful winter gusts caused walls to collapse onto fragile shelters housing Palestinians uprooted by war in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 people. These deaths underscores the perilous living conditions that continue after over 24 months of devastating airstrikes and critical lack of aid.

Ceasefire Offers Little Respite from Harsh Weather

While a truce has been active since October, aid groups state that residents do not have the sufficient shelter required to survive recurring cold-weather events.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which received the bodies, reported on Tuesday that the deceased were two women, a girl, and a male adult.

In a separate incident, the local health authority stated on the same day that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight.

"International actors has allowed us to witness death in every possible way," said Bassel Hamouda following the burial. "While it is correct the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Crushed in Tent Collapse

As per the medical center, 3 members of a one household — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an eight-metre high wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area of Gaza City. No fewer than 5 additional people were hurt in the event.

Family members on that day started removing the rubble that had buried their family and rebuilding the temporary homes for survivors.

Humanitarian Distribution and Ongoing Emergency

The UN and its aid organization allies were handing out shelter kits, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as nutrition and sanitation supplies throughout Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

The majority of Palestinians live in improvised shelters since their homes were reduced to rubble during the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations say an insufficient amount of building supplies are reaching Gaza under the ceasefire.

Casualty Figures Since the Ceasefire

Local health authorities, which is part of the administration, reports over 440 individuals have been killed by Israeli fire and their bodies brought to hospitals after the ceasefire began. The authority maintains detailed fatality data that are seen as generally reliable by international bodies and independent experts.

James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on that day that no fewer than one hundred minors below eighteen years old – sixty males and forty girls – had been killed since the truce started due to military operations, such as drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and employment of bullets. These numbers, he explained, reflected incidents where enough details had been gathered to warrant recording, but the total toll is believed to be greater. He noted that many hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"While 'bombings and shootings have slowed' under the ceasefire, they have not ceased," Elder told reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "Therefore what the world now calls quiet would be considered a crisis in any other place," he said.

Third Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of over 2 million individuals has been struggling to keep the cold weather and bad weather away while facing lack of humanitarian aid and a absence of sturdier transitional shelter, which is urgently needed during the winter months. This marks the 3rd cold season after the conflict between Israel and Hamas started on a date in late 2023, when militants attacked Israeli territory and killed around 1,200 people and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.

The local health authority says more than seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.