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Powerful cold-season winds caused walls to collapse upon fragile shelters sheltering people uprooted by conflict in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least four people. This tragedy underscores the dangerous situation that persist after more than 24 months of intense airstrikes and severe shortages of aid.

Truce Offers No Relief from Severe Weather

Although a truce has been active from October, aid groups report that Palestinians do not have the sufficient shelter required to withstand recurring winter storms.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which took in the victims, said on this week that the deceased include a pair of adult females, a girl, and a male adult.

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

"The world has allowed us to experience death in every possible way," stated a family member following the burial. "While it is correct the bombing may have paused for now, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Buried in Tent Collapse

As per the medical center, three members of a one household — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area of the city. No fewer than five additional people were hurt in the event.

Their relatives on Tuesday started removing the debris that had buried their family and rebuilding the temporary homes for those who remained.

Humanitarian Efforts and Ongoing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were handing out tents, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as food and hygiene supplies across Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of the population live in improvised tents because their houses were turned into ruins over the course of the war. Humanitarian organizations say not enough building supplies are entering Gaza under the truce.

Fatality Numbers Since the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the administration, says more than 440 people have been killed by gunfire and their remains brought to hospitals after the ceasefire went into effect. The authority keeps detailed casualty data that are seen as largely accurate by international bodies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children's fund, said on Tuesday that at least one hundred minors under the age of 18 – sixty males and 40 girls – had been killed after the truce started due to armed actions, including drone strikes, air raids, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. These numbers, he said, represented cases where sufficient details had been gathered to warrant recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He added that hundreds of minors had been injured.

"Although 'bombings and shootings have slowed' under the truce, they have not stopped," the spokesperson told journalists at a UN briefing in the Swiss city by video link from Gaza City. "Therefore what the international community now terms calm would be considered a catastrophe in any other place," he concluded.

Third Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s population of over 2 million people has been struggling to keep the cold weather and bad weather away while enduring shortages of assistance and a lack of more substantial transitional shelter, which is badly needed during the colder season. This marks the third winter since the war involving Israel and the group started on a date in late 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and murdered around twelve hundred people and took hostage 251 more into Gaza.

The local health authority says over seventy-one thousand four hundred people have been killed in the subsequent military campaign.