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Strong cold-season gusts brought walls down onto flimsy shelters sheltering people uprooted by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least four individuals. These deaths highlights the perilous living conditions that persist after more than 24 months of intense airstrikes and critical shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers No Respite from Harsh Elements

While a truce has been active since October, aid groups report that residents do not have the adequate shelter necessary to survive recurring cold-weather events.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which received the bodies, reported on this week that the deceased include two women, a girl, and a man.

Separately, the local health authority stated on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy succumbed of extreme cold overnight.

"The world has enabled us to experience death in all its forms," stated Bassel Hamouda after the funeral. "It’s true the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Buried in Tent Collapse

According to the medical center, three people of a single family — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed onto their dwelling in a area near the sea of the city. No fewer than 5 additional people were hurt in the event.

Their relatives on Tuesday started removing the rubble that had buried their family and rebuilding the temporary homes for survivors.

Aid Efforts and Continuing Crisis

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were distributing shelter kits, tarps, warm covers and clothing as well as food and sanitation items throughout Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

The majority of the population reside in improvised shelters since their homes were turned into rubble over the course of the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations contend an insufficient amount of building supplies are entering Gaza under the ceasefire.

Casualty Figures After the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 people have been fatally shot by gunfire and their bodies brought to hospitals after the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry keeps comprehensive fatality records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on that day that at least 100 minors below eighteen years old – 60 males and forty girls – had been lost their lives since the ceasefire began due to military operations, including unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. These numbers, he explained, reflected cases where enough details had been compiled to justify documentation, but the total toll is believed to be higher. He noted that hundreds of minors had been injured.

"While 'explosions and shootings have slowed' under the truce, they have not stopped," the spokesperson informed journalists at a press conference in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "Therefore what the international community now calls quiet would be viewed as a catastrophe in any other place," he said.

Another Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of more than 2 million people has been struggling to fend off the cold weather and storms at bay while enduring shortages of assistance and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is urgently needed throughout the colder season. It’s the third cold season since the conflict involving the state and the group started on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and killed approximately 1,200 people and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority reports more than 71,400 people have been fatally injured in the subsequent military campaign.