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Powerful cold-season gusts brought walls down upon fragile tents sheltering people uprooted by war in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 individuals. This tragedy underscores the dangerous situation that persist after over two years of intense airstrikes and critical lack of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers Little Relief from Severe Weather

While a truce has been active from last fall, aid groups report that residents broadly lack the sufficient housing necessary to withstand frequent cold-weather events.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the bodies, said on this week that the dead include two women, a young female, and a man.

Separately, the local health authority stated on the same day that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of hypothermia during the night.

"International actors has enabled us to witness loss of life in all its forms," stated a family member after the burial. "It’s true the shelling 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 people of a single family — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed on top of their dwelling in a coastal area of Gaza City. At least 5 additional people were hurt in the event.

Family members on that day began clearing the debris that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.

Humanitarian Distribution and Continuing Emergency

The UN and its aid organization allies were handing out tents, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as food and hygiene items across Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

The majority of the population live in makeshift tents because their homes were reduced to rubble over the course of the hostilities. Aid groups contend not enough building supplies are reaching Gaza under the ceasefire.

Fatality Numbers After the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, says more than four hundred and forty individuals have been killed by Israeli fire and their remains taken to hospitals since the truce went into effect. The authority keeps comprehensive casualty data that are seen as generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on Tuesday that at least one hundred minors below eighteen years old – 60 boys and forty females – had been lost their lives since the ceasefire started because of military operations, including drone strikes, air raids, tank shelling and employment of live ammunition. Those figures, he explained, represented incidents where enough details had been gathered to justify recording, but the overall count is expected to be greater. He noted that hundreds of minors had been wounded.

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

Another Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s population of over two million individuals has been struggling to keep the freezing temperatures and bad weather at bay while enduring shortages of assistance and a absence of more substantial temporary housing, which is urgently required during the winter months. This marks the 3rd cold season after the war between Israel and Hamas started on a date in late 2023, when fighters attacked southern Israel and killed around twelve hundred individuals and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority says over 71,400 people have been fatally injured in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.