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Strong cold-season gusts brought walls down onto flimsy shelters housing people displaced by conflict in Gaza, killing at least 4 people. These deaths underscores the dangerous situation that persist after more than 24 months of intense bombardment and severe shortages of aid.

Ceasefire Provides No Respite from Harsh Weather

While a truce has been in effect from October, humanitarian organizations state that residents do not have the adequate shelter required to withstand recurring winter storms.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which received the bodies, reported on this week that the deceased include two women, a young female, and a male adult.

Separately, the Gaza health ministry announced on the same day that a one-year-old boy succumbed of hypothermia overnight.

"International actors has enabled us to experience death in every possible way," said a family member following the burial. "While it is correct the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have seen every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Crushed in Tent Collapse

As per Shifa hospital, 3 people of a one family — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage relative, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an 26-foot tall wall fell onto their tent in a coastal area of the city. No fewer than 5 others were hurt in the incident.

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

Aid Distribution and Continuing Emergency

The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out shelter kits, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothing as well as food and sanitation supplies across Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

The majority of the population reside in makeshift shelters since their homes were reduced to rubble over the course of the hostilities. Aid groups say an insufficient amount of building supplies are entering Gaza under the ceasefire.

Casualty Figures Since the Truce

Local health authorities, which is part of the Hamas-run government, reports over four hundred and forty individuals have been killed by gunfire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the truce began. The authority keeps detailed fatality data that are considered largely accurate by international bodies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on that day that no fewer than one hundred minors below eighteen years old – 60 boys and 40 females – had been killed after the ceasefire started due to armed actions, including unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, tank shelling and use of bullets. Those figures, he said, reflected incidents where enough information had been compiled to justify documentation, but the overall count is believed to be higher. He added that many hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"Although 'bombings and shootings have decreased' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," Elder informed reporters at a press conference in the Swiss city by video from Gaza City. "Therefore what the international community now terms calm would be considered a catastrophe in any other place," he concluded.

Third Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has been fighting to keep the cold weather and bad weather away while enduring lack of assistance and a absence of more substantial transitional shelter, which is badly required during the colder season. It’s the 3rd winter since the war between Israel and Hamas started on a date in late 2023, when militants attacked Israeli territory and killed approximately twelve hundred people and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.

The local health authority says more than seventy-one thousand four hundred people have been fatally injured in Israel’s military campaign.