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Strong cold-season gusts brought walls down upon flimsy tents sheltering Palestinians uprooted by conflict in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least four individuals. This tragedy highlights the perilous situation that persist after more than 24 months of devastating bombardment and critical lack of humanitarian assistance.

Ceasefire Provides Little Respite from Severe Weather

Although a ceasefire has been in effect since October, humanitarian organizations report that Palestinians broadly lack the adequate shelter required to survive frequent cold-weather events.

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

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

"The world has enabled us to witness death in every possible way," said Bassel Hamouda following the burial. "It’s true the shelling may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Buried in Tent Collapse

As per the medical center, 3 members of a one family — elderly a man, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an eight-metre high wall fell onto their tent in a area near the sea of Gaza City. No fewer than 5 additional people were injured in the event.

Their relatives on Tuesday started clearing the rubble that had buried their family and reconstructing the tent shelters for survivors.

Humanitarian Distribution and Continuing Crisis

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were distributing shelter kits, plastic sheeting, warm covers and clothing as well as food and sanitation supplies across Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

The majority of the population live in makeshift shelters because their homes were reduced to rubble over the course of the war. Aid groups contend an insufficient amount of shelter materials are reaching Gaza during the ceasefire.

Casualty Numbers After the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the administration, says over 440 individuals have been killed by gunfire and their remains taken to hospitals since the ceasefire began. The authority keeps comprehensive fatality records that are considered generally reliable by international bodies and independent experts.

James Elder, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on that day that no fewer than one hundred children below eighteen years old – sixty boys and 40 females – had been lost their lives since the truce started due to military operations, including drone strikes, air raids, artillery fire and use of bullets. Those figures, he said, represented cases where sufficient information had been gathered to warrant recording, but the overall count is expected to be greater. He added that hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"Although 'bombings and shootings have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not stopped," Elder told journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from the Strip. "Therefore what the international community now calls calm would be viewed as a catastrophe anywhere else," he said.

Third Winter of Struggle

Gaza’s population of over two million people has been struggling to keep the freezing temperatures and bad weather away while enduring shortages of humanitarian aid and a absence of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed throughout the colder season. This marks the 3rd winter after the conflict involving the state and Hamas started on a date in late 2023, when fighters stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people and abducted two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.

The local health authority says over seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.