🔗 Share this article

Powerful cold-season gusts caused walls to collapse upon fragile tents sheltering people displaced by conflict in Gaza, killing no fewer than four individuals. This tragedy highlights the dangerous situation that persist after more than two years of devastating bombardment and severe lack of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers Little Relief from Severe Elements

Although a ceasefire has been in effect since October, aid groups report that residents broadly lack the adequate housing necessary to survive frequent winter storms.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the bodies, reported on this week that the deceased include two women, a girl, and a man.

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

"The world has allowed us to experience death in every possible way," stated Bassel Hamouda after the burial. "While it is correct the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Crushed in Tent Collapse

According to Shifa hospital, 3 members of a one family — 72-year-old a man, his teenage granddaughter, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an 26-foot high wall collapsed onto their tent in a area near the sea of the city. At least five additional people were hurt in the event.

Family members on that day started removing the rubble that had buried their family and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.

Humanitarian Distribution and Continuing Crisis

United Nations agencies and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothing as well as food and sanitation items throughout Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of Palestinians reside in makeshift shelters since their houses were turned into ruins over the course of the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations say not enough shelter materials are reaching Gaza during the truce.

Casualty Numbers After the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the administration, reports more than four hundred and forty individuals have been killed by Israeli fire and their remains brought to hospitals since the truce went into effect. The ministry maintains detailed casualty data that are considered largely accurate by UN agencies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on Tuesday that at least one hundred minors under the age of 18 – sixty males and forty females – had been killed since the ceasefire started due to armed actions, such as drone strikes, air raids, artillery fire and use of live ammunition. Those figures, he said, reflected cases where sufficient information had been gathered to justify documentation, but the total toll is believed to be higher. He added that many hundreds of children had been injured.

"While 'bombings and gunfire have decreased' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," Elder informed journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video link from the Strip. "Therefore what the world now calls quiet would be considered a crisis anywhere else," he said.

Third Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s population of more than two million people has been struggling to keep the cold weather and storms at bay while enduring lack of humanitarian aid and a absence of sturdier temporary housing, which is urgently needed during the winter months. It’s the third cold season after the war between the state and the group began on 7 October 2023, when fighters stormed into Israeli territory and murdered around 1,200 people and took hostage 251 others into Gaza.

The local health authority reports more than 71,400 people have been fatally injured in the subsequent military campaign.