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Powerful cold-season gusts brought walls down onto fragile shelters housing people displaced by war in Gaza, killing at least 4 people. This tragedy highlights the perilous living conditions that persist after more than two years of devastating bombardment and severe shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Ceasefire Provides Little Relief from Severe Weather

Although a truce has been active since October, aid groups report that residents broadly lack the adequate housing required to withstand frequent cold-weather events.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the victims, said on this week that the deceased include a pair of adult females, a young female, and a man.

In a separate incident, the local health authority announced on the same day that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of extreme cold overnight.

"International actors has allowed us to experience death in every possible way," said a family member following the burial. "While it is correct the shelling may have paused for now, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Shelter Collapse

According to the medical center, 3 people of a single household — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage relative, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an eight-metre high wall fell onto their dwelling in a coastal area of Gaza City. No fewer than 5 others were hurt in the incident.

Their relatives on that day began removing the debris that had entombed their loved ones and reconstructing the tent shelters for those who remained.

Humanitarian Efforts and Continuing Crisis

The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out shelter kits, tarps, blankets and clothing as well as nutrition and sanitation items across Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of the population reside in improvised tents since their homes were turned into ruins during the war. Aid groups contend an insufficient amount of building supplies are reaching Gaza during the truce.

Fatality Figures After the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, part of the administration, says more than 440 individuals have been killed by Israeli fire and their bodies taken to hospitals since the truce went into effect. The ministry keeps detailed fatality data that are seen as generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

James Elder, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on that day that at least 100 minors under the age of 18 – sixty boys and forty females – had been lost their lives since the truce started because of armed actions, including drone strikes, air raids, artillery fire and use of bullets. These numbers, he said, represented incidents where enough information had been compiled to justify documentation, but the overall count is believed to be higher. He added that hundreds of children had been wounded.

"Although 'explosions and shootings have decreased' during the ceasefire, they have not stopped," Elder informed journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from the Strip. "Therefore what the world now terms quiet would be considered a crisis anywhere else," he said.

Another Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s population of over two million people has been fighting to keep the freezing temperatures and storms at bay while enduring lack of assistance and a absence of sturdier transitional shelter, which is urgently required during the winter months. This marks the 3rd winter after the war between Israel and Hamas started on a date in late 2023, when militants attacked southern Israel and murdered approximately twelve hundred individuals and abducted two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports more than seventy-one thousand four hundred people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.