🔗 Share this article

Strong cold-season winds brought walls down upon fragile tents sheltering Palestinians uprooted by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least 4 individuals. These deaths underscores the dangerous living conditions that persist after more than 24 months of devastating bombardment and severe shortages of aid.

Truce Offers No Relief from Severe Weather

While a ceasefire has been in effect since October, aid groups report that Palestinians broadly lack the adequate shelter necessary to survive recurring cold-weather events.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the victims, reported on this week that the deceased were a pair of adult females, a young female, and a male adult.

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

"The world has allowed us to experience death in all its forms," said a family member following the burial. "While it is correct the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Buried in Tent Collapse

According to the medical center, 3 people of a one family — 72-year-old a man, his teenage relative, and his son's wife — were killed when an 26-foot tall wall fell on top of their tent in a area near the sea of Gaza City. At least 5 others were injured in the incident.

Their relatives on that day began clearing the debris that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the temporary homes for survivors.

Humanitarian 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 items across Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.

The majority of Palestinians live in improvised shelters because their houses were reduced to ruins during the war. Aid groups say an insufficient amount of shelter materials are reaching Gaza during the truce.

Casualty Figures After the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the administration, reports over 440 individuals have been killed by Israeli fire and their bodies taken to hospitals after the truce went into effect. The ministry maintains detailed casualty data that are seen as largely accurate by international bodies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children's fund, said on Tuesday that no fewer than 100 minors below eighteen years old – 60 males and forty females – had been lost their lives after the ceasefire began because of military operations, including unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. Those figures, he explained, represented cases where enough details had been gathered to justify documentation, but the total toll is expected to be greater. He added that many hundreds of minors had been injured.

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

Third Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s population of more than 2 million individuals has been fighting to keep the cold weather and bad weather away while enduring lack of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is urgently required throughout the winter months. It’s the 3rd cold season since the war between Israel and Hamas started on 7 October 2023, when militants attacked Israeli territory and killed approximately 1,200 individuals and took hostage 251 others into Gaza.

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