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Strong winter winds caused walls to collapse upon fragile shelters housing people displaced by conflict in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 individuals. This tragedy highlights the dangerous situation that persist after over two years of devastating airstrikes and critical lack of humanitarian assistance.

Ceasefire Provides Little Respite from Severe Weather

Although a ceasefire has been active from last fall, humanitarian organizations state that residents broadly lack the sufficient shelter required to survive recurring cold-weather events.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which received the victims, reported on Tuesday that the deceased include a pair of adult females, a young female, and a male adult.

In a separate incident, the local health authority announced on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy succumbed of extreme cold during the night.

"International actors has enabled us to experience death in every possible way," said Bassel Hamouda after the funeral. "While it is correct the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Crushed in Shelter Collapse

According to Shifa hospital, three members of a one household — 72-year-old a man, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an eight-metre high wall fell onto their dwelling in a coastal area of Gaza City. At least five additional people were hurt in the event.

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

Humanitarian Distribution and Ongoing Emergency

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were handing out tents, tarps, blankets and clothing as well as food and sanitation supplies across Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

The majority of the population reside in improvised shelters since their houses were reduced to ruins over the course of the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations contend an insufficient amount of shelter materials are reaching Gaza under the ceasefire.

Casualty Numbers After the Truce

Local health authorities, part of the administration, says over four hundred and forty people have been killed by Israeli fire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry keeps comprehensive fatality data that are considered generally reliable by UN agencies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, spokesperson for the UN children's fund, stated on that day that no fewer than 100 children under the age of 18 – sixty boys and 40 females – had been lost their lives since the ceasefire began due to armed actions, including drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and employment of live ammunition. Those figures, he said, reflected incidents where enough information had been gathered to justify recording, but the total toll is believed to be greater. He noted that hundreds of minors had been injured.

"Although 'explosions and shootings have decreased' during the truce, they have not stopped," the spokesperson told reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video link from Gaza City. "Therefore what the international community now terms calm would be viewed as a crisis anywhere else," he concluded.

Another Cold Season of Struggle

Gaza’s residents of more than two million people has been struggling to keep the freezing temperatures and bad weather at bay while enduring lack of humanitarian aid and a absence of sturdier temporary housing, which is urgently required throughout the colder season. This marks the third winter since the conflict between the state and Hamas started on 7 October 2023, when fighters attacked Israeli territory and murdered around 1,200 people and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry says more than 71,400 people have been fatally injured in the subsequent military campaign.