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Powerful cold-season winds brought walls down onto flimsy tents sheltering Palestinians displaced by conflict in Gaza, killing at least four people. These deaths highlights the perilous situation that persist after more than 24 months of intense bombardment and critical lack of humanitarian assistance.

Ceasefire Provides No Respite from Harsh Elements

While a ceasefire has been active since October, aid groups report that Palestinians do not have the sufficient housing necessary to withstand recurring winter storms.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the victims, reported on Tuesday that the dead include a pair of adult females, a young female, and a man.

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

"International actors has allowed us to experience loss of life in all its forms," said Bassel Hamouda following the funeral. "It’s true the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Crushed in Shelter Collapse

According to the medical center, three members of a single family — 72-year-old a man, his teenage granddaughter, and his son's wife — were killed when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed on top of their tent in a area near the sea of the city. No fewer than five others were hurt in the incident.

Family members on Tuesday started clearing the rubble that had entombed 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, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothing as well as nutrition and hygiene supplies across Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of the population reside in improvised shelters because their homes were turned into rubble over the course of the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations contend not enough shelter materials are reaching Gaza under the truce.

Fatality Figures After the Truce

Local health authorities, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 individuals have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their bodies taken to hospitals since the ceasefire began. The authority maintains comprehensive fatality data that are seen as generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on that day that no fewer than one hundred minors under the age of 18 – sixty boys and 40 girls – had been lost their lives after the truce began because of military operations, such as drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and employment of live ammunition. Those figures, he explained, reflected incidents where sufficient information had been gathered to justify recording, but the total toll is believed to be greater. He added that hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"While 'bombings and shootings have slowed' under the truce, they have not ceased," the spokesperson told journalists at a press conference in the Swiss city by video from the Strip. "Therefore what the world now calls quiet would be considered a catastrophe in any other place," he said.

Another Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of over 2 million individuals has been struggling to keep the cold weather and storms at bay while enduring shortages of assistance and a absence of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed during the colder season. It’s the third cold season since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when fighters attacked Israeli territory and killed around twelve hundred people and abducted 251 more into Gaza.

The local health authority reports more than seventy-one thousand four hundred people have been fatally injured in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.