🔗 Share this article

Powerful cold-season gusts caused walls to collapse upon fragile shelters housing people uprooted by war in Gaza, killing at least four individuals. These deaths highlights the dangerous living conditions that persist after more than 24 months of intense bombardment and critical shortages of aid.

Truce Offers No Relief from Severe Elements

While a ceasefire has been active since October, aid groups report that residents do not have the adequate housing necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which received the victims, said on this week that the deceased were two women, a girl, and a man.

In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry announced on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy succumbed of extreme cold during the night.

"The world has allowed us to witness loss of life in all its forms," stated a family member after the funeral. "It’s true the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Buried in Shelter Collapse

As per Shifa hospital, 3 people of a single family — 72-year-old a man, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed on top of their tent in a coastal area of Gaza City. At least five others were injured in the event.

Family members on Tuesday began clearing the debris that had entombed their family and rebuilding the tent shelters for those who remained.

Aid Efforts and Continuing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were handing out shelter kits, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothing as well as nutrition and sanitation supplies throughout Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of the population live in makeshift tents since their homes were reduced to rubble during the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations say not enough shelter materials are entering Gaza during the truce.

Casualty Numbers Since the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, reports over 440 individuals have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the truce went into effect. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on Tuesday that at least one hundred minors under the age of 18 – sixty boys and 40 females – had been killed since the ceasefire began due to military operations, including drone strikes, air raids, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. These numbers, he explained, represented cases where sufficient information had been compiled to warrant recording, but the overall count is believed to be greater. He noted that hundreds of children had been injured.

"Although 'explosions and shootings have decreased' under the ceasefire, they have not ceased," the spokesperson told journalists at a press conference in the Swiss city by video from the Strip. "Therefore what the world now terms quiet would be considered a catastrophe anywhere else," he concluded.

Another Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of over two million individuals has been struggling to keep the cold weather and storms away while enduring lack of humanitarian aid and a lack of sturdier transitional shelter, which is urgently required throughout the colder season. This marks the 3rd cold season since the war involving Israel and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when militants attacked Israeli territory and killed approximately twelve hundred individuals and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

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