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Powerful cold-season winds caused walls to collapse onto flimsy tents sheltering people displaced by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least four people. This tragedy underscores the dangerous situation that persist after more than two years of devastating airstrikes and severe shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Provides No Relief from Harsh Weather

Although a truce has been active from last fall, humanitarian organizations state that Palestinians do not have the sufficient shelter required to withstand frequent winter storms.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the bodies, reported on Tuesday that the deceased were two women, a young female, and a male adult.

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

"International actors has allowed us to witness loss of life in every possible way," said a family member after the funeral. "While it is correct the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Tent Collapse

As per the medical center, 3 people of a single family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre high wall fell onto their dwelling in a coastal area of Gaza City. No fewer than five additional people were injured in the incident.

Their relatives on Tuesday began removing the rubble that had buried their family and reconstructing the tent shelters for those who remained.

Humanitarian Distribution and Continuing Emergency

The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out shelter kits, plastic sheeting, warm covers and clothes as well as food and hygiene supplies across Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of Palestinians live in makeshift tents because their homes were reduced to ruins during the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations contend an insufficient amount of shelter materials are reaching Gaza under the truce.

Fatality Figures Since the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, part of the administration, says over four hundred and forty people have been killed by gunfire and their remains taken to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The authority maintains comprehensive casualty data that are seen as largely accurate by UN agencies and outside analysts.

James Elder, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on that day that no fewer than one hundred children below eighteen years old – 60 boys and forty females – had been killed since the ceasefire began due to armed actions, including unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. Those figures, he explained, reflected incidents where enough details had been compiled to justify documentation, but the total toll is believed to be greater. He added that hundreds of children had been wounded.

"While 'bombings and shootings have decreased' under the ceasefire, they have not stopped," the spokesperson told journalists at a press conference in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "Therefore what the world now calls quiet would be viewed as a catastrophe in any other place," he concluded.

Another Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of over 2 million individuals has been fighting to fend off the cold weather and storms at bay while enduring lack of humanitarian aid and a lack of sturdier transitional shelter, which is urgently required throughout the colder season. This marks the 3rd winter after the war involving the state and the group began on a date in late 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and killed around twelve hundred individuals and abducted two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority says over 71,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign.