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Powerful cold-season gusts brought walls down onto fragile tents sheltering Palestinians uprooted by conflict in Gaza, killing at least four people. This tragedy underscores the dangerous living conditions that continue after more than 24 months of intense airstrikes and critical shortages of aid.

Ceasefire Offers Little Respite from Harsh Elements

Although a truce has been in effect from October, humanitarian organizations report that Palestinians broadly lack the sufficient housing required to withstand frequent winter storms.

Medical staff at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the bodies, said on Tuesday that the deceased were a pair of adult females, a girl, and a man.

Separately, the Gaza health ministry announced on the same day 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," stated Bassel Hamouda after the burial. "While it is correct the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Buried in Shelter Collapse

As per the medical center, three members of a single family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 26-foot high wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area of Gaza City. At least five additional people were injured in the incident.

Family members on that day started clearing the rubble that had entombed their loved ones and rebuilding the temporary homes for survivors.

Aid Distribution and Ongoing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were distributing shelter kits, tarps, blankets and clothing as well as food and hygiene supplies across Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of Palestinians reside in makeshift shelters since their homes were reduced to ruins during the war. Humanitarian organizations say an insufficient amount of shelter materials are reaching Gaza during the ceasefire.

Casualty Numbers After the Truce

Local health authorities, part of the Hamas-run government, reports over 440 people have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their remains taken to hospitals after the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry keeps comprehensive casualty data that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and outside analysts.

James Elder, representing the UN children's fund, stated on that day that no fewer than 100 minors below eighteen years old – 60 males and 40 girls – had been killed since the ceasefire started because of military operations, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, artillery fire and employment of bullets. Those figures, he said, reflected cases where sufficient information had been compiled to justify documentation, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He noted that many hundreds of minors had been injured.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have decreased' under the truce, they have not stopped," Elder informed journalists at a press conference in Geneva by video from the Strip. "So what the international community now calls calm would be considered a catastrophe anywhere else," he said.

Another Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of over 2 million people has been struggling to keep the cold weather and storms away while facing lack of assistance and a lack of sturdier transitional shelter, which is badly needed during the winter months. It’s the third cold season since the conflict involving Israel and the group started on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and killed approximately twelve hundred individuals and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports more than 71,400 people have been fatally injured in the subsequent military campaign.