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Powerful cold-season gusts caused walls to collapse upon flimsy shelters sheltering people uprooted by conflict in Gaza, killing at least four people. These deaths underscores the dangerous living conditions that continue after more than two years of intense airstrikes and critical lack of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers No Respite from Severe Weather

Although a truce has been in effect since October, humanitarian organizations report that Palestinians broadly lack the sufficient housing necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which took in the bodies, reported on Tuesday that the dead were two women, a young female, and a man.

In a separate incident, the local health authority stated on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight.

"International actors has enabled us to witness loss of life in every possible way," stated a family member after the funeral. "While it is correct the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Crushed in Shelter Collapse

According to the medical center, 3 members of a single family — 72-year-old a man, his teenage granddaughter, and his son's wife — were killed when an 26-foot high wall fell on top of their tent in a coastal area of Gaza City. No fewer than five additional people were hurt in the event.

Their relatives on Tuesday began clearing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the temporary homes for survivors.

Humanitarian Efforts and Continuing Crisis

The UN and its humanitarian partners were distributing shelter kits, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene supplies throughout Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of Palestinians live in improvised tents because their houses were reduced to rubble during the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations contend an insufficient amount of shelter materials are reaching Gaza under the truce.

Casualty Figures Since the Ceasefire

Local health authorities, which is part of the administration, reports over 440 individuals have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their bodies taken to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The authority maintains comprehensive fatality data that are considered generally reliable by UN agencies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children's fund, stated on Tuesday that no fewer than one hundred minors below eighteen years old – 60 males and 40 girls – had been killed since the ceasefire started due to military operations, including unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, artillery fire and use of bullets. Those figures, he said, represented cases where sufficient information had been gathered to justify recording, but the total toll is expected to be greater. He noted that many hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"Although 'bombings and gunfire have decreased' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," Elder informed reporters at a press conference in Geneva by video from Gaza City. "Therefore what the world now terms calm would be considered a crisis anywhere else," he said.

Third Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s population of more than two million individuals has been fighting to keep the freezing temperatures and storms at bay while facing lack of assistance and a lack of more substantial transitional shelter, which is urgently needed throughout the colder season. This marks the 3rd winter after the war between Israel and Hamas began on a date in late 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and murdered approximately 1,200 people and took hostage 251 more into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports more than 71,400 Palestinians have been fatally injured in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.