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Powerful winter winds brought walls down onto flimsy tents housing people uprooted by war in Gaza, killing at least four people. This tragedy underscores the perilous situation that persist after more than two years of devastating airstrikes and severe lack of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers No Relief from Severe Weather

While a truce has been active since October, aid groups report that Palestinians broadly lack the sufficient housing required to survive frequent cold-weather events.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which took in the bodies, reported on Tuesday that the deceased were two women, a girl, and a male adult.

In a separate incident, the local health authority announced on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of extreme cold during the night.

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

Family Crushed in Tent Collapse

According to Shifa hospital, three people of a single family — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage granddaughter, and his son's wife — were killed when an 26-foot high wall fell on top of their dwelling in a coastal area of Gaza City. At least 5 others were hurt in the incident.

Their relatives on Tuesday began clearing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and reconstructing the temporary homes for those who remained.

Aid Efforts and Ongoing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were distributing tents, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as nutrition and sanitation items across Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of the population live in makeshift shelters because their homes were reduced to ruins over the course of the hostilities. Aid groups contend an insufficient amount of building supplies are reaching Gaza during the ceasefire.

Casualty Numbers Since the Ceasefire

Local health authorities, part of the administration, reports over four hundred and forty individuals have been fatally shot by gunfire and their remains taken to hospitals after the truce began. The ministry maintains comprehensive casualty data that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.

James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, stated on Tuesday that no fewer than 100 children under the age of 18 – 60 boys and 40 females – had been lost their lives after the ceasefire started due to armed actions, such as drone strikes, airstrikes, artillery fire and employment of bullets. These numbers, he said, reflected cases where sufficient details had been compiled to justify recording, but the overall count is expected to be greater. He noted that many hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"While 'bombings and shootings have decreased' under the ceasefire, they have not stopped," the spokesperson informed journalists at a press conference in Geneva by video from Gaza City. "So what the world now calls calm would be considered a catastrophe in any other place," he concluded.

Third Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of more than two million individuals has been fighting to keep the cold weather and storms away while enduring lack of assistance and a lack of sturdier temporary housing, which is urgently needed during the colder season. It’s the third cold season since the war between the state and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when fighters stormed into Israeli territory and murdered approximately twelve hundred individuals and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports over seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.