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Powerful cold-season winds brought walls down onto fragile tents housing people displaced by conflict in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least four individuals. This tragedy highlights the perilous situation that persist after over two years of intense airstrikes and critical shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Provides No Relief from Harsh Elements

While a truce has been active from last fall, humanitarian organizations state that Palestinians broadly lack the adequate shelter necessary to survive recurring winter storms.

Medical staff at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the bodies, said on this week that the dead were a pair of adult females, a girl, and a man.

In a separate incident, the local health authority stated on the same day that a one-year-old boy died of extreme cold during the night.

"The world has enabled us to witness loss of life in every possible way," stated a family member following the burial. "It’s true the shelling may have temporarily stopped, 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, three people of a single family — 72-year-old a man, his teenage relative, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an eight-metre high wall collapsed on top of their tent in a area near the sea of the city. At least five others were hurt in the incident.

Family members on that day began clearing the debris that had buried their loved ones and reconstructing the tent shelters for those who remained.

Humanitarian Efforts and Ongoing Crisis

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were distributing tents, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothing as well as food and sanitation supplies across Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of Palestinians reside in makeshift shelters because their houses were reduced to ruins over the course of the war. Humanitarian organizations say an insufficient amount of building supplies are reaching Gaza during the truce.

Casualty Figures After the Truce

Local health authorities, which is part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 individuals have been fatally shot by gunfire and their bodies brought to hospitals after the ceasefire began. The authority maintains detailed casualty data that are seen as generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on Tuesday that at least one hundred children below eighteen years old – 60 boys and forty girls – had been killed since the ceasefire began due to armed actions, such as drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. These numbers, he said, represented incidents where enough information had been gathered to justify documentation, but the total toll is believed to be greater. He added that many hundreds of children had been wounded.

"While 'bombings and gunfire have decreased' under the truce, they have not stopped," Elder told journalists at a UN briefing in the Swiss city by video link from the Strip. "Therefore what the international community now calls calm would be viewed as a crisis in any other place," he concluded.

Third Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of over two million individuals has been struggling to fend off the freezing temperatures and bad weather at bay while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a absence of more substantial transitional shelter, which is badly required throughout the colder season. This marks the 3rd winter after the conflict between Israel and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when fighters stormed into Israeli territory and murdered approximately 1,200 people and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports more than 71,400 people have been killed in the subsequent military campaign.