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Powerful cold-season winds caused walls to collapse onto fragile tents sheltering people uprooted by war in Gaza, killing no fewer than four individuals. This tragedy underscores the perilous living conditions that persist after over 24 months of devastating airstrikes and critical lack of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Provides Little Relief from Harsh Weather

Although a ceasefire has been in effect since October, aid groups state that Palestinians do not have the adequate housing necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which received the bodies, reported on this week that the deceased include two women, a young female, and a male adult.

In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry announced on the same day that a one-year-old boy succumbed of hypothermia overnight.

"International actors has allowed us to witness loss of life in every possible way," said Bassel Hamouda after the burial. "While it is correct the shelling may have paused for now, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Buried in Shelter Collapse

As per the medical center, 3 members of a one family — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old relative, and his son's wife — were killed when an eight-metre high wall fell onto their tent in a coastal area of Gaza City. No fewer than five others were hurt in the incident.

Family members on Tuesday began clearing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the tent shelters for those who remained.

Humanitarian Efforts and Continuing Crisis

The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out tents, plastic sheeting, warm covers and clothing as well as food and sanitation items across Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of Palestinians reside in improvised shelters because their houses were reduced to rubble during the war. Aid groups contend not enough building supplies are reaching Gaza during the ceasefire.

Casualty Numbers Since the Ceasefire

Local health authorities, which is part of the administration, reports more than four hundred and forty individuals have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry keeps detailed fatality data that are seen as largely accurate by UN agencies and outside analysts.

James Elder, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on that day that at least one hundred children below eighteen years old – sixty boys and 40 girls – had been lost their lives since the truce started because of armed actions, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, artillery fire and employment of bullets. These numbers, he explained, represented incidents where sufficient details had been compiled to justify documentation, but the overall count is expected to be higher. He added that many hundreds of minors had been injured.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have decreased' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," Elder told journalists at a UN briefing in the Swiss city by video from Gaza City. "So what the world now calls calm would be viewed as a crisis in any other place," he said.

Third Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s population of over 2 million individuals has been fighting to keep the freezing temperatures and storms away while enduring lack of assistance and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is urgently needed during the colder season. It’s the 3rd winter after the conflict between Israel and the group started on a date in late 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and murdered approximately twelve hundred individuals and took hostage 251 others into Gaza.

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