🔗 Share this article

Strong winter gusts caused walls to collapse onto flimsy tents sheltering people displaced by war in Gaza, killing at least four people. This tragedy underscores the dangerous situation that persist after more than 24 months of devastating airstrikes and critical shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Ceasefire Offers No Respite from Severe Weather

While a ceasefire has been in effect from last fall, aid groups state that residents broadly lack the sufficient housing required to withstand recurring cold-weather events.

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

Separately, the Gaza health ministry stated on the same day that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia during the night.

"International actors has enabled us to witness death in all its forms," said a family member after the burial. "While it is correct the bombing 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 Shifa hospital, three people of a single household — elderly a man, his teenage granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed on top of their dwelling in a area near the sea of the city. At least five others were injured in the event.

Their relatives on that day began removing the rubble that had entombed their family and rebuilding the temporary homes for those who remained.

Humanitarian Distribution and Ongoing Crisis

The UN and its aid organization allies were distributing tents, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as nutrition and sanitation items across Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.

The majority of Palestinians live in makeshift tents since their homes were reduced to ruins over the course of the hostilities. Aid groups contend not enough shelter materials are entering Gaza under the truce.

Fatality Figures After the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, reports more than 440 individuals have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their bodies taken to hospitals since the ceasefire began. The ministry keeps detailed casualty data that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on Tuesday that no fewer than one hundred children under the age of 18 – 60 males and 40 girls – had been lost their lives since the truce began due to military operations, such as drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and employment of bullets. These numbers, he explained, reflected incidents where enough details had been gathered to warrant documentation, but the overall count is believed to be higher. He noted that hundreds of children had been injured.

"While 'bombings and shootings have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," the spokesperson informed reporters at a press conference in the Swiss city by video from the Strip. "Therefore what the international community now calls calm would be considered a catastrophe anywhere else," he concluded.

Third Winter of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of over 2 million people has been fighting to keep the cold weather and bad weather away while facing lack of humanitarian aid and a absence of sturdier temporary housing, which is urgently required throughout the winter months. This marks the 3rd cold season since the war between the state and Hamas began on a date in late 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and murdered around 1,200 individuals and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

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