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Powerful cold-season gusts brought walls down upon fragile tents sheltering Palestinians uprooted by war in Gaza, killing at least 4 individuals. This tragedy highlights the dangerous living conditions that persist after over two years of devastating airstrikes and critical shortages of aid.

Ceasefire Offers No Respite from Severe Weather

Although a truce has been active from last fall, aid groups state that residents broadly lack the adequate housing necessary to survive recurring cold-weather events.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which took in the bodies, said on Tuesday that the dead were a pair of adult females, a young female, and a man.

In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry stated on Tuesday that a 12-month-old infant died of hypothermia overnight.

"The world has enabled us to experience loss of life in all its forms," said a family member following the funeral. "It’s true the shelling may have paused for now, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Buried in Shelter Collapse

As per the medical center, 3 members of a single household — elderly a man, his 15-year-old relative, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an 26-foot high wall collapsed on top of their dwelling in a area near the sea of the city. No fewer than five others were injured in the event.

Family members on Tuesday started removing the debris that had entombed their loved ones and reconstructing the tent shelters for those who remained.

Aid Efforts and Continuing Crisis

The UN and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene items across Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of the population live in improvised tents since their houses were turned into ruins during the hostilities. Aid groups say not enough building supplies are reaching Gaza during the truce.

Fatality Numbers After the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, part of the administration, says over four hundred and forty people have been killed by gunfire and their remains brought to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry keeps comprehensive fatality records that are considered largely accurate by international bodies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on Tuesday that no fewer than one hundred children under the age of 18 – 60 boys and forty girls – had been killed since the ceasefire started due to military operations, such as drone strikes, airstrikes, artillery fire and use of live ammunition. Those figures, he explained, represented incidents where enough information had been compiled to justify documentation, but the total toll is expected to be greater. He added that many hundreds of children had been injured.

"While 'explosions and shootings have decreased' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," the spokesperson informed reporters at a UN briefing in the Swiss city by video from the Strip. "So what the international community now terms quiet would be considered a catastrophe in any other place," he concluded.

Third Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of more than 2 million people has been fighting to keep the cold weather and bad weather away while facing shortages of assistance and a lack of sturdier transitional shelter, which is urgently required during the colder season. It’s the third winter after the conflict between Israel and the group began on a date in late 2023, when fighters attacked Israeli territory and killed around 1,200 people and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports more than 71,400 Palestinians have been fatally injured in the subsequent retaliatory offensive.