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Powerful cold-season gusts brought walls down onto flimsy shelters sheltering people uprooted by conflict in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 people. This tragedy underscores the dangerous living conditions that continue after more than 24 months of intense airstrikes and severe shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Provides No Relief from Severe Weather

While a ceasefire has been active since October, humanitarian organizations report that residents broadly lack the sufficient shelter necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the victims, said on this week that the dead were a pair of adult females, a girl, and a man.

Separately, the local health authority stated on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia during the night.

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

Family Buried in Shelter Collapse

As per Shifa hospital, three members of a single household — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage granddaughter, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an 26-foot high wall collapsed onto their tent in a area near the sea of Gaza City. At least five others were injured in the event.

Family members on Tuesday began clearing the debris that had buried their family and rebuilding the temporary homes for those who remained.

Humanitarian Distribution and Ongoing Crisis

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were handing out shelter kits, tarps, warm covers and clothing as well as food and sanitation items across Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of the population reside in improvised shelters because their homes were reduced to rubble over the course of the war. Humanitarian organizations contend an insufficient amount of shelter materials are reaching Gaza under the ceasefire.

Fatality Figures Since the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, says over 440 people have been killed by gunfire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the truce began. The ministry keeps detailed fatality data that are seen as largely accurate by UN agencies and independent experts.

James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children's fund, stated on Tuesday that no fewer than 100 minors below eighteen years old – sixty males and 40 girls – had been lost their lives since 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 cases where enough details had been gathered to warrant recording, but the overall count is expected to be greater. He added that many hundreds of minors had been injured.

"While 'bombings and gunfire have slowed' during the truce, they have not stopped," Elder told journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from Gaza City. "Therefore what the world now terms calm would be considered a catastrophe in any other place," he said.

Third Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of more than two million people has been struggling to fend off the freezing temperatures and storms at bay while enduring shortages of assistance and a lack of more substantial transitional shelter, which is badly needed during the winter months. It’s the 3rd winter since the war between Israel and Hamas started on a date in late 2023, when fighters attacked southern Israel and killed approximately 1,200 individuals and abducted two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry says more than 71,400 people have been fatally injured in Israel’s military campaign.