🔗 Share this article

Strong cold-season winds caused walls to collapse upon fragile shelters housing people displaced by war in Gaza, killing at least four individuals. This tragedy highlights the dangerous situation that persist after more than two years of intense airstrikes and critical lack of aid.

Truce Provides No Respite from Severe Weather

While a truce has been active since last fall, aid groups state that Palestinians do not have the adequate housing necessary to survive frequent winter storms.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which received the bodies, said on this week that the dead were a pair of adult females, a young female, and a male adult.

In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry stated on the same day that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of extreme cold during the night.

"International actors has allowed us to experience loss of life in all its forms," said Bassel Hamouda after the funeral. "It’s true the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have seen every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Buried in Shelter Collapse

According to Shifa hospital, 3 members of a one household — elderly a man, his teenage granddaughter, and his son's wife — were killed when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed onto their tent in a area near the sea of the city. At least 5 others were hurt in the incident.

Family members on Tuesday began clearing the rubble that had entombed their family and reconstructing the temporary homes for survivors.

Humanitarian Distribution and Continuing Emergency

The UN and its aid organization allies were distributing shelter kits, plastic sheeting, warm covers and clothing as well as nutrition and hygiene items across Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.

The majority of the population reside in improvised tents because their houses were reduced to ruins over the course of the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations say an insufficient amount of building supplies are reaching Gaza under the truce.

Fatality Numbers Since the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, part of the administration, says more than four hundred and forty people have been killed by gunfire and their bodies taken to hospitals after the truce went into effect. The ministry keeps detailed fatality records that are considered generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children's fund, stated on Tuesday that at least 100 children under the age of 18 – sixty boys and 40 girls – had been killed since the ceasefire started due to armed actions, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, tank shelling and employment of live ammunition. These numbers, he said, represented cases where sufficient details had been compiled to warrant recording, but the overall count is expected to be greater. He noted that hundreds of minors had been injured.

"While 'explosions and shootings have slowed' during the truce, they have not ceased," Elder told reporters at a press conference in the Swiss city by video from Gaza City. "So what the international community now calls quiet would be viewed as a crisis in any other place," he concluded.

Third Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s population of more than two million people has been struggling to keep the cold weather and bad weather away while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a absence of more substantial transitional shelter, which is badly needed throughout the colder season. This marks the 3rd winter after the war involving Israel and the group started on a date in late 2023, when militants attacked Israeli territory and killed approximately 1,200 individuals and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority says over seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been fatally injured in the subsequent retaliatory offensive.