🔗 Share this article

Powerful cold-season gusts caused walls to collapse onto flimsy shelters housing Palestinians uprooted by conflict in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least four individuals. These deaths underscores the dangerous living conditions that continue after more than 24 months of devastating bombardment and critical shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers Little Respite from Harsh Elements

Although a ceasefire has been in effect from October, humanitarian organizations report that Palestinians do not have the adequate housing necessary to survive recurring winter storms.

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

Separately, the local health authority announced on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy succumbed of extreme cold overnight.

"International actors has allowed us to witness loss of life in every possible way," said Bassel Hamouda after the funeral. "While it is correct the shelling may have paused for now, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Shelter Collapse

According to Shifa hospital, 3 people of a one household — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage relative, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an eight-metre tall wall fell on top of their tent in a coastal area of Gaza City. No fewer than 5 others were injured in the event.

Family members on Tuesday started removing the debris that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the temporary homes for survivors.

Humanitarian Distribution and Continuing Crisis

The UN and its aid organization allies were distributing shelter kits, tarps, warm covers and clothing as well as nutrition and hygiene items across Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

The majority of the population live in improvised shelters because their houses were reduced to rubble over the course of the hostilities. Aid groups say an insufficient amount of shelter materials are entering Gaza under the truce.

Casualty Figures After the Truce

Local health authorities, part of the Hamas-run government, reports over four hundred and forty people have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their remains taken to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The authority maintains detailed fatality records that are considered generally reliable by international bodies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on that day that no fewer than one hundred minors under the age of 18 – 60 boys and 40 females – had been killed after the ceasefire started due to military operations, including drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and employment of live ammunition. These numbers, he explained, represented incidents where enough information had been compiled to justify documentation, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He noted that hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have decreased' under the truce, they have not stopped," the spokesperson told reporters at a press conference in the Swiss city by video from the Strip. "Therefore what the international community now calls quiet would be considered a crisis anywhere else," he concluded.

Third Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s population of over two million people has been fighting to fend off the cold weather and storms at bay while enduring lack of assistance and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly required throughout the colder season. This marks the 3rd winter since the war between the state and Hamas began on a date in late 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and killed around twelve hundred people and abducted 251 more into Gaza.

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