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Strong winter winds brought walls down upon fragile tents housing Palestinians uprooted by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of no fewer than four people. These deaths underscores the dangerous living conditions that persist after over two years of intense airstrikes and severe shortages of aid.

Ceasefire Offers Little Respite from Severe Weather

Although a ceasefire has been active from last fall, humanitarian organizations report that residents broadly lack the sufficient housing necessary to withstand recurring cold-weather events.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which received the victims, 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 local health authority stated on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight.

"The world has enabled us to experience loss of life in all its forms," said Bassel Hamouda following the burial. "It’s true the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Tent Collapse

As per the medical center, 3 members of a one household — elderly a man, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his son's wife — were killed when an 26-foot high wall collapsed on top of their tent in a coastal area of the city. At least five additional people were hurt in the incident.

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

Humanitarian Efforts and Continuing Crisis

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were handing out shelter kits, tarps, blankets and clothing as well as nutrition and sanitation items throughout Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of Palestinians live in makeshift shelters because their homes were turned into ruins during the hostilities. Aid groups say an insufficient amount of shelter materials are entering Gaza during the ceasefire.

Casualty Numbers After the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, says more than four hundred and forty people have been fatally shot by gunfire and their bodies taken to hospitals after the truce went into effect. The authority maintains detailed fatality data that are considered largely accurate by UN agencies and outside analysts.

James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on Tuesday that at least one hundred children under the age of 18 – 60 males and 40 girls – had been killed after the ceasefire began due to armed actions, such as drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and employment of live ammunition. These numbers, he said, reflected incidents where enough information had been compiled to justify recording, but the total toll is believed to be higher. He noted that many hundreds of children had been wounded.

"While 'bombings and shootings have decreased' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," the spokesperson informed journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from the Strip. "So what the world now calls calm would be considered a catastrophe anywhere else," he concluded.

Third Winter of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of more than two million people has been fighting to keep the cold weather and bad weather at bay while enduring shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is urgently required during the winter months. This marks the third winter since the conflict between the state and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when fighters stormed into southern Israel and murdered approximately twelve hundred people and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority says over 71,400 people have been killed in Israel’s military campaign.