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Strong winter gusts caused walls to collapse upon flimsy tents housing people displaced by conflict in Gaza, claiming the lives of at least 4 people. These deaths highlights the dangerous living conditions that continue after more than 24 months of devastating bombardment and severe lack of humanitarian assistance.

Ceasefire Offers No Relief from Severe Weather

Although a truce has been in effect from last fall, aid groups report that residents broadly lack the sufficient shelter required to withstand recurring cold-weather events.

Officials at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which took in the victims, reported on this week that the dead were two women, a girl, and a male adult.

In a separate incident, the local health authority stated on the same day that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of extreme cold during the night.

"The world has enabled us to witness death in every possible way," said a family member after the burial. "While it is correct the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of death in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Family Crushed in Tent Collapse

As per the medical center, three members of a one household — 72-year-old a man, his teenage relative, and his son's wife — were fatally injured when an eight-metre high wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area of the city. No fewer than five additional people were hurt in the incident.

Family members on Tuesday began clearing the rubble that had buried their family and reconstructing the temporary homes for survivors.

Humanitarian Distribution and Ongoing Crisis

The UN and its aid organization allies were handing out tents, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothing as well as nutrition and sanitation supplies across Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

Most of the population live in improvised shelters since their houses were turned into rubble over the course of the war. Aid groups contend not enough building supplies are entering Gaza under the truce.

Casualty Figures After the Ceasefire

The Gaza health ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than four hundred and forty people have been fatally shot by gunfire and their bodies taken to hospitals since the truce went into effect. The authority keeps comprehensive casualty records that are seen as largely accurate by UN agencies and independent experts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children's fund, said on that day that no fewer than one hundred minors below eighteen years old – 60 boys and forty girls – had been lost their lives since the ceasefire began because of military operations, including drone strikes, air raids, tank shelling and use of bullets. These numbers, he said, represented incidents where enough details had been compiled to justify documentation, but the overall count is expected to be higher. He added that many hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"While 'explosions and shootings have slowed' during the ceasefire, they have not ceased," the spokesperson told reporters at a press conference in Geneva by video link from the Strip. "So what the world now terms calm would be considered a catastrophe anywhere else," he said.

Third Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of more than 2 million individuals has been fighting to keep the cold weather and bad weather at bay while enduring shortages of assistance and a absence of sturdier transitional shelter, which is urgently needed throughout the colder season. It’s the 3rd cold season since the war between the state and the group began on 7 October 2023, when fighters attacked southern Israel and murdered around twelve hundred people and abducted two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.

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