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Powerful winter winds brought walls down upon fragile tents housing people uprooted by conflict in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 individuals. This tragedy underscores the dangerous living conditions that continue after over two years of intense bombardment and critical lack of humanitarian assistance.

Truce Offers Little Respite from Harsh Elements

Although a ceasefire has been in effect from October, humanitarian organizations report that residents broadly lack the adequate shelter required to withstand recurring cold-weather events.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which received the victims, reported on this week that the deceased include two women, a young female, and a man.

Separately, the local health authority announced on the same day that a one-year-old boy succumbed of extreme cold during the night.

"International actors has enabled us to witness death in all its forms," said a family member after the funeral. "It’s true the shelling may have paused for now, but we have seen every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Crushed in Tent Collapse

As per Shifa hospital, three people of a one family — elderly a man, his teenage relative, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an 26-foot tall wall fell on top of their tent in a coastal area of Gaza City. No fewer than five additional people were injured in the event.

Family members on that day started removing the debris that had entombed their loved ones and rebuilding the temporary homes for those who remained.

Aid Distribution and Ongoing Crisis

The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out shelter kits, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as food and hygiene supplies across Gaza, said the relevant UN coordination body.

Most of the population reside in makeshift shelters because their houses were reduced to rubble over the course of the hostilities. Aid groups contend not enough building supplies are entering Gaza during the truce.

Fatality Figures After the Ceasefire

Local health authorities, which is part of the Hamas-run government, says over 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 keeps detailed fatality data that are considered generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

James Elder, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on that day that at least 100 minors below eighteen years old – sixty boys and 40 girls – had been killed since the truce began due to armed actions, such as drone strikes, air raids, tank shelling and employment of bullets. These numbers, he said, represented incidents where sufficient details had been compiled to justify documentation, but the overall count is expected to be higher. He noted that hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," Elder told journalists at a UN briefing in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "So what the international community now terms quiet would be considered a crisis in any other place," he concluded.

Third Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of over two million people has been struggling to keep the freezing temperatures and bad weather away while enduring lack of assistance and a lack of sturdier temporary housing, which is badly required during the colder season. It’s the 3rd cold season since the conflict involving Israel and the group started on a date in late 2023, when fighters stormed into southern Israel and killed around twelve hundred individuals and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry reports more than 71,400 Palestinians have been fatally injured in the subsequent retaliatory offensive.