🔗 Share this article

Strong cold-season winds brought walls down onto flimsy tents sheltering Palestinians uprooted by war in Gaza, killing no fewer than four people. This tragedy highlights the dangerous living conditions that persist after more than 24 months of intense bombardment and severe lack of aid.

Truce Offers Little Respite from Harsh Weather

Although a truce has been in effect from October, humanitarian organizations state that Palestinians broadly lack the sufficient housing required to withstand frequent winter storms.

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

In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry stated on the same day that a one-year-old boy died of extreme cold overnight.

"The world has enabled us to witness loss of life in every possible way," stated Bassel Hamouda after the funeral. "It’s true the bombing may have paused for now, but we have seen every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Buried in Tent Collapse

As per the medical center, three members of a one family — 72-year-old a man, his teenage granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre high wall fell onto their dwelling in a coastal area of Gaza City. No fewer than five additional people were hurt in the incident.

Family members on that day started clearing the debris that had buried their family and reconstructing the tent shelters for survivors.

Aid Distribution and Ongoing Crisis

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

Most of Palestinians live in improvised shelters since their homes were turned into ruins during the hostilities. Aid groups contend not enough building supplies are entering Gaza during the truce.

Casualty Figures After the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, reports more than 440 people have been fatally shot by gunfire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the truce began. The authority keeps comprehensive fatality data that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.

James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on that day that no fewer than one hundred minors below eighteen years old – sixty males and forty girls – had been killed after the truce started due to military operations, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, artillery fire and employment of bullets. These numbers, he explained, represented cases where enough details had been compiled to justify documentation, but the total toll is believed to be higher. He noted that many hundreds of children had been injured.

"While 'explosions and shootings have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not stopped," Elder informed reporters at a UN briefing in the Swiss city by video link from the Strip. "So what the world now terms quiet would be viewed as a catastrophe in any other place," he said.

Third Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has been struggling to fend off the freezing temperatures and bad weather away while enduring lack of assistance and a absence of more substantial transitional shelter, which is urgently required during the winter months. This marks the third cold season since the war involving the state and the group began on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and killed approximately 1,200 individuals and abducted 251 more into Gaza.

The local health authority says more than seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent military campaign.