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Strong cold-season gusts brought walls down onto flimsy shelters sheltering Palestinians displaced by conflict in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 individuals. These deaths highlights the dangerous situation that continue after over 24 months of devastating airstrikes and critical lack of aid.

Truce Offers Little Respite from Harsh Elements

While a truce has been in effect since October, humanitarian organizations report that Palestinians do not have the adequate housing required to withstand recurring cold-weather events.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which took in the victims, reported on this week that the dead were two women, a girl, and a male adult.

In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry announced on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of extreme cold during the night.

"International actors has allowed us to experience loss of life in all its forms," said a family member after the funeral. "While it is correct the shelling may have paused for now, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Buried in Shelter Collapse

As per the medical center, 3 people of a single household — elderly a man, his teenage granddaughter, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an 26-foot high wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area of the city. No fewer than five others were hurt in the incident.

Their relatives on that day started clearing the debris that had buried their family and rebuilding the temporary homes for survivors.

Aid Efforts and Ongoing Crisis

The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out tents, plastic sheeting, warm covers and clothing as well as food and sanitation supplies throughout Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.

The majority of the population reside in improvised shelters because their homes were reduced to ruins over the course of the hostilities. Aid groups say not enough building supplies are entering Gaza during the truce.

Fatality Figures Since the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, part of the administration, reports more than 440 individuals have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their remains taken to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The authority keeps comprehensive fatality records that are considered generally reliable by international bodies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on Tuesday that no fewer than one hundred children under the age of 18 – 60 boys and forty females – had been lost their lives after the truce started due to military operations, including drone strikes, airstrikes, artillery fire and employment of live ammunition. Those figures, he said, represented cases where sufficient information had been compiled to warrant recording, but the overall count is expected to be greater. He added that hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"While 'explosions and shootings have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," the spokesperson told reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "Therefore what the international community now terms quiet would be considered a crisis anywhere else," he concluded.

Another Winter of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of more than two million people has been struggling to fend off the freezing temperatures and storms away while facing lack of assistance and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed during the colder season. This marks the 3rd cold season since the conflict between Israel and Hamas started on 7 October 2023, when fighters attacked southern Israel and killed approximately twelve hundred individuals and abducted 251 others into Gaza.

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