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Powerful winter winds brought walls down onto fragile tents housing people displaced by war in Gaza, killing no fewer than four individuals. This tragedy highlights the dangerous situation that continue after more than 24 months of devastating bombardment and severe shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers No Respite from Harsh Elements

Although a truce has been in effect from October, humanitarian organizations report that residents broadly lack the adequate shelter necessary to survive recurring winter storms.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which received the bodies, reported on Tuesday that the dead were a pair of adult females, a young female, and a man.

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

"The world has enabled us to experience loss of life in every possible way," stated a family member following the burial. "While it is correct the shelling may have paused for now, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Shelter Collapse

As per the medical center, three people of a single family — 72-year-old a man, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 26-foot tall wall collapsed on top of their dwelling in a coastal area of the city. No fewer than five additional people were injured in the event.

Their relatives on Tuesday started removing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and reconstructing the tent shelters for survivors.

Aid Efforts and Ongoing Emergency

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

The majority of Palestinians live in makeshift shelters since their homes were reduced to ruins during the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations say not enough building supplies are entering Gaza during the ceasefire.

Casualty Figures After the Truce

Local health authorities, part of the administration, says more than 440 people have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their bodies taken to hospitals after the truce began. The authority keeps detailed fatality data that are considered largely accurate by UN agencies and outside analysts.

James Elder, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on that day that no fewer than one hundred children under the age of 18 – 60 males and forty females – had been killed after the truce began due to armed actions, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, artillery fire and use of live ammunition. These numbers, he explained, reflected incidents where sufficient details had been gathered to justify 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' under the truce, they have not stopped," the spokesperson informed reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "So what the world now calls calm would be viewed as a catastrophe in any other place," he concluded.

Third Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of more than 2 million people has been fighting to fend off the cold weather and storms away while enduring lack of assistance and a absence of sturdier transitional shelter, which is urgently needed during the colder season. It’s the third cold season since the war between Israel and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and murdered approximately 1,200 individuals and took hostage 251 more into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry says more than seventy-one thousand four hundred people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.