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Strong cold-season winds caused walls to collapse upon fragile tents housing people uprooted by conflict in Gaza, killing at least four individuals. This tragedy underscores the dangerous situation that continue after over two years of intense airstrikes and severe shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Ceasefire Provides Little Respite from Harsh Weather

While a ceasefire has been active from October, humanitarian organizations report that residents broadly lack the adequate shelter required to survive frequent winter storms.

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

In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry stated on Tuesday that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of hypothermia during the night.

"International actors has allowed us to experience loss of life in all its forms," stated Bassel Hamouda following the funeral. "While it is correct the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have seen every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Buried in Tent Collapse

According to the medical center, 3 people of a one household — 72-year-old a man, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an eight-metre high wall fell onto their tent in a area near the sea of Gaza City. No fewer than five others were injured in the incident.

Their relatives on Tuesday started clearing the rubble that had entombed their loved ones and reconstructing the temporary homes for survivors.

Aid Efforts and Continuing Crisis

The UN and its aid organization allies were distributing tents, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as food and sanitation supplies throughout Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of Palestinians live in makeshift shelters because their houses were reduced to ruins over the course of the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations contend an insufficient amount of building supplies are entering Gaza under the ceasefire.

Fatality Numbers After the Ceasefire

Local health authorities, part of the administration, reports over 440 individuals have been fatally shot by gunfire and their bodies taken to hospitals since the truce began. The ministry keeps comprehensive fatality records that are considered generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children's fund, stated on that day that no fewer than one hundred minors under the age of 18 – sixty males and forty girls – had been killed since the truce started because of military operations, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. These numbers, he said, reflected cases where enough details had been compiled to justify recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He added that many hundreds of minors had been injured.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have decreased' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," the spokesperson told journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "So what the international community now terms calm would be viewed as a catastrophe anywhere else," he said.

Another Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of more than 2 million individuals has been fighting to keep the cold weather and storms at bay while facing lack of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly required throughout the colder season. It’s the third cold season since the war involving Israel and Hamas started on 7 October 2023, when fighters stormed into Israeli territory and murdered around 1,200 individuals and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.

The local health authority says more than seventy-one thousand four hundred people have been fatally injured in the subsequent military campaign.