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Powerful cold-season winds caused walls to collapse onto fragile tents housing Palestinians uprooted by conflict in Gaza, killing at least four people. This tragedy underscores the perilous situation that continue after more than two years of intense bombardment and critical lack of aid.

Truce Offers No Respite from Harsh Weather

Although a ceasefire has been in effect from last fall, aid groups state that Palestinians broadly lack the sufficient shelter required to withstand frequent cold-weather events.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which received the victims, said on Tuesday that the dead were a pair of adult females, a girl, and a man.

Separately, the Gaza health ministry stated on Tuesday that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of hypothermia overnight.

"The world has enabled us to experience loss of life in every possible way," stated a family member after the funeral. "It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Buried in Shelter Collapse

According to the medical center, three people of a one family — elderly a man, his teenage relative, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 26-foot high wall fell onto their tent in a coastal area of the city. At least five others were injured in the incident.

Family members on Tuesday began removing the debris that had buried their family and reconstructing the tent shelters for those who remained.

Aid Distribution and Ongoing Emergency

The UN and its aid organization allies were handing out tents, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene supplies across Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

The majority of the population live in makeshift shelters since their houses were reduced to rubble during the hostilities. Aid groups say not enough building supplies are entering Gaza under the truce.

Fatality Numbers After the Ceasefire

Local health authorities, part of the Hamas-run government, says over four hundred and forty people have been killed by Israeli fire and their bodies taken to hospitals since the ceasefire began. The authority keeps comprehensive casualty 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 100 children under the age of 18 – 60 males and forty females – had been killed after the truce started due to military operations, including drone strikes, air raids, tank shelling and use of bullets. Those figures, he explained, reflected cases where enough details had been compiled to warrant recording, but the total toll is believed to be higher. He added that hundreds of children had been wounded.

"While 'bombings and gunfire have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not stopped," Elder told journalists at a press conference in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "So what the international community now calls calm would be considered a catastrophe in any other place," he concluded.

Another Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s population of more than 2 million individuals has been fighting to keep the cold weather and bad weather at bay while enduring lack of assistance and a absence of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed during the winter months. It’s the 3rd winter since the conflict 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 251 others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports more than seventy-one thousand four hundred people have been killed in the subsequent military campaign.