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Strong cold-season gusts caused walls to collapse onto flimsy shelters sheltering people displaced by conflict in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least four individuals. These deaths highlights the dangerous living conditions that continue after over 24 months of intense airstrikes and severe shortages of aid.

Ceasefire Provides Little Respite from Severe Weather

Although a ceasefire has been in effect since October, humanitarian organizations report that Palestinians broadly lack the adequate shelter required to survive frequent winter storms.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which received the victims, reported on this week that the dead were two women, a girl, and a male adult.

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

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

Relatives Buried in Tent Collapse

According to Shifa hospital, three members of a single household — elderly a man, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an eight-metre high wall fell on top of their dwelling in a coastal area of Gaza City. At least 5 additional people were injured in the incident.

Family members on that day began removing the rubble that had entombed their family and reconstructing the tent shelters for survivors.

Aid Distribution and Ongoing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were handing out tents, tarps, warm covers and clothing as well as food and sanitation supplies across Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of the population live in improvised tents because their homes were reduced to rubble over the course of the hostilities. Aid groups contend an insufficient amount of building supplies are entering Gaza under the ceasefire.

Casualty Figures Since the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, reports more than 440 individuals have been killed by Israeli fire and their remains brought to hospitals after the truce went into effect. The ministry maintains comprehensive casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by international bodies and independent experts.

James Elder, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on that day that no fewer than 100 minors under the age of 18 – sixty males and forty girls – had been lost their lives since the ceasefire started because of military operations, including unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, artillery fire and employment of live ammunition. Those figures, he said, represented cases where sufficient information had been gathered to warrant documentation, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He noted that many hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"While 'explosions and gunfire have decreased' under the ceasefire, they have not ceased," the spokesperson told journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from the Strip. "So what the international community now calls calm would be viewed as a catastrophe anywhere else," he said.

Another Winter of Hardship

Gaza’s population of over 2 million people has been struggling to fend off the cold weather and storms away while facing lack of assistance and a absence of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed during the winter months. It’s the third cold season after the conflict involving the state and Hamas began on a date in late 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people and took hostage 251 more into Gaza.

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