🔗 Share this article

Strong winter winds brought walls down upon flimsy tents sheltering Palestinians displaced by conflict in Gaza, claiming the lives of no fewer than 4 individuals. These deaths highlights the perilous living conditions that persist after more than 24 months of devastating bombardment and critical lack of aid.

Truce Offers No Respite from Severe Weather

While a truce has been active since last fall, aid groups report that Palestinians do not have the adequate shelter necessary to survive frequent cold-weather events.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which received the bodies, said on this week that the dead were a pair of adult females, a young female, and a male adult.

Separately, the local health authority announced on the same day that a 12-month-old infant died of hypothermia during the night.

"International actors has enabled us to experience death in all its forms," said a family member following the burial. "While it is correct the shelling may have paused for now, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Buried in Tent Collapse

As per the medical center, three members of a single household — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old relative, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an 26-foot high wall fell onto their tent in a area near the sea of the city. At least 5 additional people were injured in the incident.

Their relatives on Tuesday started removing the debris that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the tent shelters for those who remained.

Humanitarian Distribution and Ongoing Emergency

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

The majority of the population reside in makeshift tents since their homes were reduced to rubble during the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations say not enough shelter materials are entering Gaza during the ceasefire.

Fatality Numbers Since the Ceasefire

Local health authorities, which is part of the Hamas-run government, reports over 440 people have been fatally shot by gunfire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the truce went into effect. The authority maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children's fund, stated on that day that no fewer than one hundred minors under the age of 18 – sixty males and 40 females – had been killed after the ceasefire began because of armed actions, including unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, air raids, artillery fire and employment of bullets. These numbers, he said, reflected incidents where sufficient details had been gathered to justify recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He noted that many hundreds of minors had been injured.

"While 'explosions and gunfire have slowed' under the truce, they have not ceased," the spokesperson informed journalists at a press conference in Geneva by video link from the Strip. "Therefore what the world now calls calm would be considered a catastrophe in any other place," he said.

Third Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s population of over 2 million people has been fighting to keep the cold weather and bad weather away while facing lack of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial transitional shelter, which is badly required during the winter months. This marks the 3rd cold season since the conflict involving Israel and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and murdered around 1,200 people and took hostage 251 others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports over seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been fatally injured in the subsequent military campaign.