🔗 Share this article

Powerful winter winds brought walls down upon flimsy shelters housing people displaced by conflict in Gaza, claiming the lives of no fewer than 4 individuals. This tragedy underscores the perilous situation that continue after more than 24 months of intense airstrikes and critical shortages of humanitarian assistance.

Ceasefire Provides Little Respite from Harsh Elements

While a ceasefire has been active from October, humanitarian organizations report that Palestinians do not have the sufficient housing required to withstand recurring cold-weather events.

Medical staff at Shifa hospital, which received the bodies, reported on this week that the dead include a pair of adult females, a young female, and a man.

In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry announced on Tuesday that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of extreme cold overnight.

"International actors has enabled us to witness death in all its forms," stated Bassel Hamouda after the burial. "While it is correct the bombing may have paused for now, but we have seen all imaginable reasons of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Buried in Shelter Collapse

According to the medical center, 3 members of a single family — 72-year-old a man, his 15-year-old relative, and his son's wife — were killed when an eight-metre high wall fell on top of their tent in a coastal area of Gaza City. No fewer than 5 others were hurt in the incident.

Their relatives on Tuesday began removing the rubble that had entombed their loved ones and reconstructing the temporary homes for those who remained.

Aid Distribution and Ongoing Emergency

The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out tents, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and sanitation items across Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

The majority of Palestinians reside in makeshift tents because their homes were turned into ruins over the course of the war. Aid groups say an insufficient amount of building supplies are reaching Gaza during the truce.

Fatality Figures After the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, reports more than four hundred and forty people have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their remains taken to hospitals after the truce went into effect. The ministry keeps detailed casualty data that are seen as generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children's fund, said on Tuesday that no fewer than 100 minors below eighteen years old – 60 boys and 40 girls – had been killed after the ceasefire started because of military operations, such as drone strikes, air raids, artillery fire and use of live ammunition. These numbers, he said, reflected incidents where enough information had been compiled to justify documentation, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He noted that hundreds of children had been injured.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have decreased' during the ceasefire, they have not stopped," Elder told reporters at a press conference in Geneva by video from Gaza City. "So what the world now terms quiet would be viewed as a crisis anywhere else," he concluded.

Another Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has been fighting to fend off the freezing temperatures and storms away while facing lack of assistance and a absence of sturdier temporary housing, which is urgently needed throughout the colder season. It’s the 3rd cold season after the conflict involving Israel and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and murdered approximately twelve hundred people and took hostage 251 others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry says more than seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent military campaign.