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Powerful winter gusts brought walls down onto flimsy tents housing Palestinians uprooted by conflict in Gaza, killing at least four people. These deaths underscores the perilous living conditions that persist after over two years of intense airstrikes and severe lack of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers Little Respite from Severe Weather

While a truce has been active since last fall, humanitarian organizations state that residents do not have the sufficient shelter necessary to withstand frequent cold-weather events.

Medical staff at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which received the bodies, said on Tuesday that the dead include two women, a girl, and a man.

Separately, the Gaza health ministry announced on the same day that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight.

"The world has enabled us to experience loss of life in all its forms," said Bassel Hamouda after the funeral. "While it is correct the shelling may have paused for now, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Tent Collapse

According to Shifa hospital, 3 members of a single family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre high wall collapsed onto their tent in a area near the sea of Gaza City. At least five others were injured in the incident.

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

Humanitarian Efforts and Ongoing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were distributing shelter kits, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and sanitation items throughout Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of Palestinians live in makeshift tents because their houses were reduced to rubble during the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations contend an insufficient amount of building supplies are reaching Gaza under the truce.

Casualty Numbers After the Truce

Local health authorities, which is part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 people have been killed by gunfire and their bodies brought to hospitals after the truce began. The ministry keeps comprehensive casualty records that are considered generally reliable by UN agencies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children's fund, stated on that day that at least one hundred minors below eighteen years old – 60 males and forty females – had been lost their lives after the ceasefire began due to military operations, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, tank shelling and use of bullets. Those figures, he explained, represented incidents where sufficient details had been compiled to warrant documentation, but the overall count is believed to be higher. He noted that hundreds of minors had been injured.

"Although 'bombings and gunfire have decreased' under the truce, they have not ceased," Elder told reporters at a press conference in the Swiss city by video link from the Strip. "Therefore what the world now calls calm would be viewed as a catastrophe anywhere else," he concluded.

Third Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of over two million individuals has been struggling to fend off the cold weather and storms at bay while enduring lack of assistance and a absence of sturdier temporary housing, which is badly needed throughout the winter months. It’s the 3rd cold season after the conflict involving Israel and Hamas began on a date in late 2023, when fighters attacked southern Israel and murdered around twelve hundred individuals and abducted two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

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