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Powerful cold-season winds brought walls down onto flimsy tents sheltering Palestinians displaced by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of no fewer than 4 people. This tragedy highlights the perilous situation that continue after more than two years of intense airstrikes and critical lack of humanitarian assistance.

Ceasefire Offers No Respite from Harsh Weather

Although a truce has been active since last fall, aid groups report that residents broadly lack the adequate housing necessary to survive frequent winter storms.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which received the bodies, said on this week that the deceased were two women, a young female, and a male adult.

Separately, the Gaza health ministry stated on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia during the night.

"International actors has enabled us to experience loss of life in all its forms," stated a family member following the funeral. "While it is correct the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Buried in Tent Collapse

As per Shifa hospital, 3 people of a single family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 26-foot tall wall collapsed onto their dwelling in a area near the sea of the city. At least five others were hurt in the incident.

Their relatives on Tuesday began removing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.

Humanitarian Distribution and Continuing Crisis

The UN and its aid organization allies were distributing tents, tarps, blankets and clothing as well as food and hygiene supplies throughout Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of the population live in improvised tents because their houses were turned into rubble during the hostilities. Aid groups contend an insufficient amount of building supplies are reaching Gaza under the ceasefire.

Casualty Figures After the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says over 440 individuals have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their remains brought to hospitals since the ceasefire began. The ministry maintains comprehensive casualty data that are seen as largely accurate by UN agencies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children's fund, said on Tuesday that at least one hundred children below eighteen years old – 60 boys and forty females – had been lost their lives after the truce started because of military operations, including drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and employment of live ammunition. Those figures, he said, reflected cases where sufficient details had been compiled to justify recording, but the overall count is believed to be greater. He noted that hundreds of children had been wounded.

"While 'bombings and gunfire have slowed' under the truce, they have not ceased," Elder told reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from the Strip. "So what the world now calls calm would be viewed as a catastrophe in any other place," he said.

Another Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of over 2 million individuals has been fighting to fend off the cold weather and storms at bay while enduring shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of sturdier temporary housing, which is urgently needed during the winter months. It’s the third cold season after the war involving the state and the group started on a date in late 2023, when fighters stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 individuals and abducted 251 others into Gaza.

The local health authority reports over 71,400 people have been killed in the subsequent military campaign.