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Strong cold-season gusts brought walls down upon fragile tents housing people displaced by conflict in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least 4 people. This tragedy highlights the dangerous living conditions that persist after more than two years of devastating airstrikes and critical lack of aid.

Truce Provides Little Relief from Severe Weather

Although a ceasefire has been in effect since October, humanitarian organizations report that residents broadly lack the sufficient shelter necessary to withstand frequent cold-weather events.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which took in the victims, said on Tuesday that the dead include 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 hypothermia during the night.

"The world has enabled us to experience death in all its forms," said 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 death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Buried in Tent Collapse

As per Shifa hospital, 3 people of a single household — 72-year-old a man, his teenage granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — 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 5 others were injured in the event.

Their relatives on Tuesday started clearing the debris that had buried their family and reconstructing the tent shelters for those who remained.

Aid Distribution and Continuing Crisis

The UN and its aid organization allies were distributing shelter kits, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as food and sanitation supplies throughout Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

The majority of Palestinians live in makeshift tents because their houses were turned into ruins over the course of the hostilities. Aid groups say not enough shelter materials are reaching Gaza under the truce.

Fatality Numbers Since the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, reports over four hundred and forty people have been fatally shot by gunfire and their bodies taken to hospitals since the truce began. The authority keeps detailed casualty data that are considered generally reliable by UN agencies and outside analysts.

James Elder, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on Tuesday that no fewer than one hundred minors under the age of 18 – 60 boys and 40 females – had been killed since the ceasefire started because of military operations, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, artillery fire and employment of bullets. These numbers, he explained, reflected incidents where enough information had been compiled to justify documentation, but the overall count is believed to be higher. He noted that hundreds of children had been wounded.

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

Another Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s population of more than two million people has been struggling to fend off the cold weather and storms at bay while facing lack of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed throughout the colder season. It’s the 3rd winter since the conflict between the state and Hamas began on a date in late 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and killed approximately 1,200 individuals and abducted 251 others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports more than seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign.