🔗 Share this article

Strong winter gusts caused walls to collapse upon flimsy shelters housing people displaced by war in Gaza, claiming the lives of no fewer than four people. This tragedy highlights the perilous living conditions that persist after over two years of intense bombardment and critical lack of aid.

Ceasefire Provides No Respite from Harsh Weather

Although a truce has been in effect since October, aid groups report that Palestinians broadly lack the sufficient shelter required to survive recurring cold-weather events.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which took in the victims, reported on Tuesday that the dead include a pair of adult females, a girl, and a male adult.

In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry stated on the same day that a one-year-old boy succumbed of hypothermia overnight.

"The world has allowed us to experience death in every possible way," stated a family member after the funeral. "While it is correct the shelling may have paused for now, but we have seen every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Buried in Tent Collapse

According to the medical center, 3 people of a one household — elderly a man, his teenage granddaughter, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area of Gaza City. At least five additional people were injured in the incident.

Their relatives on Tuesday started removing the rubble that had buried their family and reconstructing the tent shelters for those who remained.

Humanitarian Efforts and Continuing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were handing out shelter kits, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothing as well as food and hygiene items across Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of the population live in makeshift tents since their homes were reduced to ruins during the war. Aid groups say not enough shelter materials are entering Gaza under the ceasefire.

Casualty Figures Since the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than four hundred and forty individuals have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their bodies taken to hospitals since the truce went into effect. The ministry keeps comprehensive casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by international bodies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children's fund, said on that day that at least one hundred minors below eighteen years old – 60 males and 40 girls – had been killed after the ceasefire started due to military operations, such as drone strikes, air raids, artillery fire and employment of live ammunition. These numbers, he said, represented incidents where enough information had been compiled to justify recording, but the total toll is believed to be higher. He noted that many hundreds of minors had been injured.

"While 'bombings and gunfire have slowed' under the truce, they have not stopped," Elder told reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video link from the Strip. "So what the world now calls quiet would be considered a catastrophe in any other place," he said.

Third Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of more than two million individuals has been struggling to keep the freezing temperatures and bad weather at bay while enduring shortages of humanitarian aid and a absence of sturdier transitional shelter, which is urgently required during the winter months. It’s the third winter after the war involving Israel and the group began on 7 October 2023, when fighters stormed into southern Israel and killed approximately twelve hundred individuals and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports over 71,400 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.