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Powerful cold-season gusts brought walls down upon flimsy tents sheltering people displaced by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of no fewer than 4 people. This tragedy highlights the dangerous situation that persist after more than two years of devastating bombardment and critical shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers No Relief from Severe Weather

While a ceasefire has been in effect from October, aid groups report that residents do not have the adequate shelter necessary to withstand recurring cold-weather events.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which took in the victims, reported on Tuesday that the dead include two women, a girl, and a male adult.

In a separate incident, the local health authority stated on the same day that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of hypothermia during the night.

"The world has enabled us to experience loss of life in all its forms," stated Bassel Hamouda following the burial. "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

As per Shifa hospital, three people of a one household — 72-year-old a man, his teenage relative, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 26-foot tall wall fell on top of their tent in a area near the sea of Gaza City. No fewer than five others were injured in the incident.

Family members on that day started removing the rubble that had buried their family and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.

Humanitarian Distribution and Ongoing Crisis

The UN and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as food and sanitation supplies throughout Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of Palestinians live in makeshift tents because their homes were turned into rubble over the course of the war. Aid groups say an insufficient amount of building supplies are entering Gaza under the truce.

Casualty Figures After the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, reports more than four hundred and forty people have been killed by gunfire and their remains taken to hospitals after the truce went into effect. The ministry maintains detailed fatality records that are seen as largely accurate by international bodies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children's fund, said on that day that no fewer than 100 minors below eighteen years old – 60 boys and 40 females – had been lost their lives after the ceasefire started due to armed actions, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, tank shelling and use of bullets. These numbers, he explained, reflected incidents where sufficient details had been gathered to warrant documentation, but the total toll is believed to be greater. He noted that many hundreds of children had been injured.

"While 'explosions and gunfire have slowed' under the truce, they have not ceased," the spokesperson informed reporters at a UN briefing in the Swiss city by video from Gaza City. "Therefore what the international community now calls quiet would be viewed as a catastrophe anywhere else," he concluded.

Third Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of more than 2 million people has been fighting to keep the freezing temperatures and storms at bay while enduring shortages of assistance and a absence of sturdier transitional shelter, which is badly required throughout the winter months. It’s the third cold season since the war involving the state and the group began on a date in late 2023, when fighters attacked Israeli territory and killed around twelve hundred people and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority reports more than 71,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign.