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Powerful cold-season gusts caused walls to collapse upon flimsy tents housing people displaced by conflict in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 individuals. This tragedy underscores the dangerous situation that persist after over 24 months of intense airstrikes and critical lack of aid.

Truce Provides Little Respite from Severe Elements

While a ceasefire has been in effect since last fall, humanitarian organizations state that Palestinians do not have the sufficient housing required to withstand frequent winter storms.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which received the bodies, reported on this week that the dead include a pair of adult females, a girl, and a man.

In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry stated on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy succumbed of extreme cold overnight.

"International actors has enabled us to witness loss of life in all its forms," said Bassel Hamouda after the funeral. "While it is correct the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Buried in Tent Collapse

As per Shifa hospital, 3 people of a one household — 72-year-old a man, his 15-year-old relative, and his son's wife — were killed when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed onto their dwelling in a coastal area of Gaza City. At least 5 others were hurt in the incident.

Family members on Tuesday started clearing the rubble that had entombed their family and reconstructing the tent shelters for survivors.

Humanitarian Efforts and Ongoing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were handing out tents, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as food and sanitation supplies across Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of Palestinians reside in makeshift tents since their homes were reduced to ruins over the course of the war. Aid groups contend an insufficient amount of building supplies are reaching Gaza during the truce.

Fatality Figures After the Truce

Local health authorities, which is part of the Hamas-run government, says more than four hundred and forty individuals have been killed by Israeli fire and their bodies taken to hospitals after the truce began. The authority keeps detailed casualty records that are considered largely accurate by UN agencies and independent experts.

James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children's fund, stated on Tuesday that at least one hundred minors below eighteen years old – sixty males and 40 girls – had been killed after the truce began because of military operations, including drone strikes, air raids, tank shelling and use of bullets. Those figures, he explained, reflected incidents where enough details had been compiled to warrant documentation, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He noted that many hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"While 'bombings and gunfire have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not stopped," Elder informed journalists at a press conference in the Swiss city by video link from the Strip. "Therefore what the world now terms quiet would be viewed as a catastrophe in any other place," he said.

Third Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s population of more than 2 million individuals has been struggling to fend off the freezing temperatures and bad weather away while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of sturdier transitional shelter, which is urgently required throughout the colder season. It’s the 3rd cold season since the war between Israel and the group started on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and killed approximately twelve hundred people and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.

The local health authority says more than 71,400 people have been killed in the subsequent military campaign.