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Strong winter winds brought walls down upon fragile tents housing Palestinians displaced by conflict in Gaza, killing no fewer than four individuals. This tragedy highlights the dangerous situation that persist after over two years of intense bombardment and severe lack of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers Little Respite from Severe Weather

Although a ceasefire has been active from last fall, humanitarian organizations report that residents broadly lack the sufficient shelter required to survive recurring winter storms.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which took in the bodies, reported on Tuesday that the dead were a pair of adult females, a young female, and a man.

Separately, the Gaza health ministry stated on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of extreme cold overnight.

"The world has allowed us to experience death in all its forms," stated Bassel Hamouda following the burial. "While it is correct the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Buried in Shelter Collapse

According to the medical center, three people of a single household — elderly a man, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed onto their tent in a area near the sea of Gaza City. At least 5 additional people were hurt in the incident.

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

Humanitarian Efforts and Continuing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene items across Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

The majority of Palestinians live in improvised shelters since their houses were reduced to ruins during the war. Humanitarian organizations contend an insufficient amount of shelter materials are reaching Gaza under the truce.

Fatality Figures After the Truce

Local health authorities, part of the Hamas-run government, says over four hundred and forty people have been killed by gunfire and their remains brought to hospitals after the truce went into effect. The ministry keeps detailed fatality records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and outside analysts.

James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on that day that at least one hundred children below eighteen years old – sixty males and forty females – had been killed since the ceasefire started because of armed actions, such as unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, artillery fire and employment of bullets. Those figures, he explained, represented incidents where sufficient details had been gathered to warrant recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He noted that hundreds of children had been wounded.

"While 'explosions and shootings have slowed' under the ceasefire, they have not ceased," the spokesperson informed reporters at a press conference in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "So what the world now terms calm would be considered a catastrophe in any other place," he said.

Third Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s population of over two million individuals has been fighting to fend off the cold weather and storms at bay while enduring shortages of humanitarian aid and a absence of sturdier transitional shelter, which is badly needed throughout the winter months. This marks the 3rd cold season since the conflict involving Israel and the group began on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and murdered approximately twelve hundred individuals and abducted two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority reports over 71,400 people have been fatally injured in the subsequent military campaign.