🔗 Share this article

Strong winter winds brought walls down upon flimsy shelters sheltering people displaced by conflict in Gaza, killing at least 4 people. These deaths underscores the perilous living conditions that persist after more than two years of intense airstrikes and critical shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Provides Little Relief from Harsh Weather

While a ceasefire has been in effect since October, humanitarian organizations report that residents do not have the sufficient housing necessary to withstand recurring cold-weather events.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which took in the victims, reported on this week that the deceased were a pair of adult females, a young female, and a male adult.

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

"International actors has enabled us to witness death in all its forms," stated a family member following the burial. "It’s true the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Buried in Shelter Collapse

As per the medical center, three people of a one family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an eight-metre tall wall fell onto their dwelling in a coastal area of Gaza City. At least five additional people were injured in the incident.

Their relatives on that day started clearing the debris that had entombed their loved ones and reconstructing the tent shelters for survivors.

Aid Efforts and Continuing Crisis

The UN and its humanitarian partners were distributing shelter kits, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and sanitation items throughout Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of the population live in makeshift shelters since their houses were reduced to ruins over the course of the war. Aid groups say an insufficient amount of building supplies are entering Gaza under the truce.

Casualty Numbers After the Truce

Local health authorities, which is part of the administration, reports over four hundred and forty individuals have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the truce went into effect. The ministry keeps comprehensive fatality records that are seen as largely accurate by international bodies and independent experts.

James Elder, representing the UN children's fund, said on that day that no fewer than 100 children under the age of 18 – 60 males and 40 females – had been killed since the ceasefire began due to military operations, including unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, artillery fire and use of bullets. Those figures, he explained, represented cases where sufficient information had been compiled to justify documentation, but the total toll is believed to be higher. He noted that many hundreds of children had been wounded.

"Although 'explosions and shootings have decreased' under the ceasefire, they have not stopped," Elder informed reporters at a press conference in the Swiss city by video link from Gaza City. "So what the international community now terms calm would be viewed as a crisis anywhere else," he said.

Another Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of more than 2 million people has been struggling to fend off the freezing temperatures and bad weather away while enduring shortages of assistance and a absence of sturdier temporary housing, which is urgently required during the winter months. This marks the 3rd winter since the conflict between the state and the group started on a date in late 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and killed around 1,200 people and abducted two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry says over 71,400 people have been killed in the subsequent military campaign.