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Powerful cold-season winds caused walls to collapse onto flimsy tents housing Palestinians displaced by conflict in Gaza, killing at least four people. These deaths underscores the dangerous living conditions that continue after more than two years of devastating airstrikes and critical lack of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers No Respite from Severe Elements

Although a truce has been active from October, aid groups report that residents broadly lack the sufficient housing required to survive frequent winter storms.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which received the victims, said on Tuesday that the deceased were a pair of adult females, a girl, and a man.

Separately, the local health authority stated on Tuesday that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of extreme cold during the night.

"The world has enabled us to witness death in all its forms," stated a family member after the burial. "It’s true the shelling may have paused for now, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Crushed in Tent Collapse

As per Shifa hospital, three members of a one family — 72-year-old a man, his teenage relative, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre high wall collapsed onto their tent in a area near the sea of Gaza City. No fewer than five others were hurt in the incident.

Their relatives on Tuesday began removing the debris that had buried their family and reconstructing the tent shelters for those who remained.

Aid Efforts and Ongoing Crisis

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were handing out shelter kits, plastic sheeting, warm covers and clothing as well as food and sanitation items throughout Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of Palestinians reside in improvised tents because their homes were reduced to ruins over the course of the war. Humanitarian organizations contend not enough shelter materials are reaching Gaza during the ceasefire.

Fatality Numbers After the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the administration, says more than four hundred and forty individuals have been killed by Israeli fire and their remains brought to hospitals since the ceasefire began. The ministry keeps detailed casualty records that are seen as largely accurate by UN agencies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on that day that at least 100 children below eighteen years old – sixty males and forty females – had been killed after the truce began because of armed actions, such as drone strikes, air raids, artillery fire and employment of live ammunition. Those figures, he explained, represented cases where sufficient information had been compiled to warrant documentation, but the overall count is believed to be higher. He added that hundreds of children had been wounded.

"Although 'bombings and shootings have slowed' under the truce, they have not stopped," Elder told reporters at a press conference in Geneva by video from the Strip. "So what the world now calls quiet would be considered a catastrophe in any other place," he concluded.

Another Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has been fighting to keep the cold weather and storms at bay while enduring lack of assistance and a absence of sturdier transitional shelter, which is badly required throughout the colder season. It’s the third winter since the conflict between Israel and Hamas started on a date in late 2023, when fighters stormed into Israeli territory and murdered around 1,200 people and abducted two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority says more than 71,400 people have been fatally injured in Israel’s military campaign.