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Powerful cold-season winds brought walls down onto fragile shelters sheltering people displaced by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least 4 individuals. These deaths highlights the perilous living conditions that persist after more than 24 months of devastating airstrikes and severe shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Ceasefire Offers No Relief from Severe Weather

While a ceasefire has been in effect from last fall, humanitarian organizations report that Palestinians broadly lack the adequate housing required to survive frequent cold-weather events.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which took in the victims, said on Tuesday that the deceased were a pair of adult females, a girl, and a male adult.

Separately, the local health authority stated on the same day that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight.

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

Relatives Crushed in Shelter Collapse

According to Shifa hospital, three people of a single household — elderly a man, his teenage granddaughter, and his son's wife — were killed when an 26-foot tall wall collapsed on top of their dwelling in a coastal area of the city. No fewer than 5 additional people were injured in the incident.

Family members on Tuesday began removing the debris that had buried their family and reconstructing the temporary homes for those who remained.

Aid Efforts and Ongoing Emergency

The UN and its aid organization allies were handing out shelter kits, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as food and sanitation supplies across Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of the population live in improvised tents since their homes were reduced to rubble over the course of the hostilities. Aid groups say not enough shelter materials are entering Gaza during the ceasefire.

Fatality Figures Since the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, reports more than 440 people have been killed by gunfire and their bodies taken to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry maintains detailed fatality data that are considered largely accurate by international bodies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on that day that no fewer than one hundred minors below eighteen years old – 60 boys and forty females – had been killed after the truce started because of armed actions, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, artillery fire and use of bullets. These numbers, he said, represented cases where sufficient details had been compiled to warrant documentation, but the overall count is expected to be greater. He noted that many hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have decreased' during the ceasefire, they have not stopped," the spokesperson told journalists at a UN briefing in the Swiss city by video from the Strip. "So what the world now terms quiet would be viewed as a crisis in any other place," he concluded.

Another Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of more than 2 million individuals has been struggling to keep the freezing temperatures and storms at bay while enduring shortages of humanitarian aid and a absence of sturdier temporary housing, which is urgently required throughout the winter months. It’s the 3rd winter since the war between the state and the group began on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and killed around twelve hundred people and abducted two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry says over 71,400 people have been fatally injured in Israel’s military campaign.