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Powerful winter gusts brought walls down onto fragile shelters sheltering people displaced by war in Gaza, killing no fewer than four people. These deaths underscores the perilous living conditions that persist after over 24 months of intense airstrikes and severe shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Ceasefire Offers No Respite from Severe Weather

While a truce has been active since last fall, humanitarian organizations report that residents broadly lack the sufficient shelter required to withstand frequent cold-weather events.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which took in the bodies, said on this week that the deceased were a pair of adult females, a young female, and a male adult.

In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry announced on Tuesday that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of extreme cold overnight.

"International actors has enabled us to experience loss of life in all its forms," said Bassel Hamouda following the burial. "While it is correct the shelling may have paused for now, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Shelter Collapse

According to the medical center, three members of a single family — elderly a man, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre high wall fell onto their dwelling in a area near the sea of Gaza City. No fewer than five additional people were hurt in the event.

Family members on Tuesday began removing the rubble that had entombed their family and reconstructing the temporary homes for those who remained.

Humanitarian Efforts and Ongoing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were handing out tents, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as food and sanitation supplies across Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

The majority of the population reside in improvised shelters because their houses were turned into ruins over the course of the hostilities. Aid groups say an insufficient amount of shelter materials are reaching Gaza under the truce.

Casualty Figures Since the Truce

Local health authorities, part of the administration, reports over four hundred and forty individuals have been fatally shot by gunfire and their bodies brought to hospitals after the truce went into effect. The ministry maintains detailed casualty data that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children's fund, said on that day that no fewer than one hundred children below eighteen years old – 60 boys and forty females – had been lost their lives since the ceasefire began due to armed actions, such as drone strikes, airstrikes, artillery fire and employment of live ammunition. These numbers, he explained, reflected incidents where sufficient information had been compiled to warrant documentation, but the overall count is expected to be higher. He noted that hundreds of children had been injured.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have decreased' under the truce, they have not stopped," the spokesperson told journalists at a press conference in the Swiss city by video from the Strip. "So what the world now calls calm would be viewed as a crisis anywhere else," he said.

Another Winter of Hardship

Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has been struggling to keep the cold weather and storms away while enduring shortages of assistance and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is urgently required throughout the winter months. This marks the third cold season after the war between Israel and the group started on a date in late 2023, when militants attacked Israeli territory and murdered approximately 1,200 individuals and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority says over 71,400 Palestinians have been fatally injured in Israel’s military campaign.