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Powerful cold-season winds brought walls down onto flimsy shelters sheltering people displaced by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of no fewer than four people. This tragedy highlights the dangerous situation that continue after more than 24 months of devastating bombardment and severe lack of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Provides No Relief from Severe Elements

Although a ceasefire has been active from October, aid groups state that residents do not have the adequate shelter required to survive frequent cold-weather events.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the victims, said on this week that the dead were a pair of adult females, a young female, and a male adult.

Separately, the local health authority announced on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight.

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

Family Buried in Shelter Collapse

According to the medical center, three members of a one household — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old relative, and his son's wife — were killed when an eight-metre high wall collapsed onto their dwelling in a area near the sea of Gaza City. At least five others were injured in the incident.

Their relatives on that day began removing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the temporary homes for survivors.

Humanitarian Efforts and Ongoing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were handing out tents, plastic sheeting, warm covers and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene supplies throughout Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

The majority of Palestinians live in makeshift shelters since their homes were reduced to ruins over the course of the hostilities. Aid groups contend not enough building supplies are reaching Gaza under the truce.

Casualty Numbers After the Ceasefire

Local health authorities, which is part of the administration, says over four hundred and forty individuals have been killed by gunfire and their remains brought to hospitals after the truce went into effect. The ministry keeps comprehensive fatality data that are seen as generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

James Elder, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on that day that no fewer than one hundred children under the age of 18 – sixty males and forty girls – had been lost their lives after the ceasefire started because of armed actions, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, artillery fire and use of live ammunition. Those figures, he explained, represented cases where enough information had been compiled to warrant recording, but the total toll is believed to be greater. He added that hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"Although 'bombings and shootings have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," Elder informed journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "So what the world now terms quiet would be considered a crisis in any other place," he said.

Another Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of more than two million people has been fighting to fend off the freezing temperatures and bad weather at bay while enduring lack of assistance and a absence of more substantial temporary housing, which is urgently needed during the winter months. This marks the 3rd winter since the war between the state and the group started on 7 October 2023, when fighters stormed into southern Israel and killed approximately twelve hundred individuals and abducted 251 others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry says over 71,400 Palestinians have been fatally injured in the subsequent retaliatory offensive.