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Strong winter gusts brought walls down onto fragile shelters housing people displaced by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least 4 individuals. These deaths highlights the perilous living conditions that persist after over 24 months of intense bombardment and critical shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Ceasefire Offers No Respite from Harsh Weather

Although a ceasefire has been in effect since last fall, aid groups report that residents do not have the sufficient shelter necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which received the bodies, said on Tuesday that the dead were two women, a girl, and a man.

Separately, the local health authority stated on the same day that a 12-month-old infant died of extreme cold overnight.

"The world has enabled us to experience death in every possible way," said Bassel Hamouda following the funeral. "It’s true the shelling may have paused for now, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Buried in Tent Collapse

As per the medical center, 3 members of a single family — 72-year-old a man, his 15-year-old relative, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed onto their dwelling in a area near the sea of the city. At least 5 additional people were hurt in the incident.

Family members on Tuesday started removing the debris that had buried their family and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.

Aid Distribution and Continuing Crisis

The UN and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, tarps, warm covers and clothing as well as food and sanitation items across Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of Palestinians live in makeshift shelters because their houses were turned into rubble during the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations say not enough building supplies are reaching Gaza during the ceasefire.

Casualty Numbers Since the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says over four hundred and forty individuals have been fatally shot by gunfire and their remains brought to hospitals since the truce began. The authority maintains comprehensive fatality data that are seen as largely accurate by UN agencies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children's fund, 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 started due to military operations, including unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, artillery fire and use of live ammunition. Those figures, he explained, represented incidents where enough details had been compiled to warrant recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He noted that hundreds of children had been injured.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have decreased' under the ceasefire, they have not ceased," the spokesperson told journalists at a press conference in the Swiss city by video link from the Strip. "Therefore what the international community now calls quiet would be viewed as a crisis in any other place," he concluded.

Third Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of over two million individuals has been fighting to keep the cold weather and bad weather at bay while enduring shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of sturdier temporary housing, which is badly needed during the colder season. This marks the third cold season after the war involving the state and Hamas started on a date in late 2023, when fighters attacked southern Israel and killed around twelve hundred people and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority says more than seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been fatally injured in the subsequent retaliatory offensive.