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Strong cold-season gusts brought walls down upon flimsy tents housing people displaced by conflict in Gaza, claiming the lives of no fewer than 4 people. These deaths underscores the perilous situation that persist after more than two years of intense airstrikes and critical shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Ceasefire Offers Little Respite from Harsh Elements

While a ceasefire has been active since October, aid groups report that Palestinians do not have the adequate shelter necessary to survive frequent winter storms.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the victims, reported on this week that the dead include two women, a young female, and a male adult.

In a separate incident, the local health authority announced on the same day that a 12-month-old infant died of hypothermia overnight.

"The world has enabled us to experience death in all its forms," said a family member after the burial. "It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have seen every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Crushed in Tent Collapse

As per Shifa hospital, 3 members of a one family — 72-year-old a man, his teenage relative, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an 26-foot high wall fell on top of their tent in a area near the sea of the city. At least five additional people were injured in the incident.

Family members on Tuesday started removing the rubble that had entombed their loved ones and rebuilding the temporary homes for those who remained.

Aid Distribution and Ongoing Crisis

The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out shelter kits, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as nutrition and sanitation items throughout Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.

The majority of the population live in makeshift tents since their houses were turned into rubble over the course of the war. Humanitarian organizations contend an insufficient amount of shelter materials are entering Gaza under the ceasefire.

Fatality Numbers Since the Truce

Local health authorities, part of the Hamas-run government, says over 440 individuals have been killed by gunfire and their remains brought to hospitals since the truce went into effect. The ministry keeps detailed casualty records 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 no fewer than 100 children under the age of 18 – sixty boys and forty girls – had been killed since the ceasefire began due to military operations, such as drone strikes, airstrikes, artillery fire and use of bullets. These numbers, he explained, reflected cases where enough details had been compiled to justify recording, but the total toll is expected to be greater. He added that many hundreds of children had been wounded.

"While 'explosions and gunfire have decreased' under the truce, they have not ceased," Elder informed reporters at a UN briefing in the Swiss city by video link from Gaza City. "Therefore what the world now calls quiet would be considered a catastrophe anywhere else," he concluded.

Third Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of more than two million people has been fighting to fend off the cold weather and storms at bay while enduring shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of sturdier transitional shelter, which is badly required throughout the winter months. 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 killed approximately 1,200 people and abducted two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry says over seventy-one thousand four hundred people have been fatally injured in the subsequent retaliatory offensive.