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Powerful cold-season winds caused walls to collapse onto flimsy tents housing Palestinians uprooted by conflict in Gaza, killing no fewer than four individuals. This tragedy highlights the dangerous situation that persist after over 24 months of devastating bombardment and severe lack of aid.

Ceasefire Provides Little Relief from Severe Weather

Although a ceasefire has been active from October, humanitarian organizations state that residents do not have the sufficient housing necessary to survive recurring winter storms.

Officials at Shifa hospital, which took in the bodies, said on this week that the deceased were a pair of adult females, a girl, and a male adult.

Separately, the local health authority stated on Tuesday that a 12-month-old infant succumbed of extreme cold overnight.

"The world has allowed us to experience death in every possible way," stated Bassel Hamouda following the burial. "While it is correct the bombing may have paused for now, but we have seen every conceivable cause of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."

Relatives Buried in Shelter Collapse

According to the medical center, 3 people of a one family — elderly a man, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were fatally injured when an 26-foot tall wall fell on top of their tent in a coastal area of Gaza City. At least five others were injured in the incident.

Family members on Tuesday started clearing the debris that had entombed their loved ones and reconstructing the tent shelters for those who remained.

Aid Efforts and Continuing Crisis

United Nations agencies and its aid organization allies were distributing tents, plastic sheeting, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and sanitation items throughout Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.

The majority of the population live in improvised shelters because their houses were reduced to rubble during the hostilities. Humanitarian organizations say an insufficient amount of shelter materials are entering Gaza during the truce.

Fatality Numbers After the Truce

The Gaza health ministry, part of the administration, reports over four hundred and forty people have been fatally shot by gunfire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the truce went into effect. The authority maintains detailed casualty records that are considered generally reliable by international bodies and outside analysts.

A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children's fund, said on Tuesday that no fewer than one hundred minors below eighteen years old – 60 males and forty females – had been killed since the truce started because of armed actions, including unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, tank shelling and employment of bullets. Those figures, he explained, represented cases where enough details had been gathered to justify documentation, but the total toll is expected to be greater. He noted that hundreds of minors had been wounded.

"Although 'explosions and gunfire have decreased' under the truce, they have not stopped," the spokesperson told journalists at a press conference in the Swiss city by video from Gaza City. "Therefore what the world now terms quiet would be considered a catastrophe anywhere else," he concluded.

Another Cold Season of Hardship

Gaza’s residents of more than 2 million people has been fighting to keep the freezing temperatures and storms away while facing lack of humanitarian aid and a lack of sturdier temporary housing, which is badly required during the winter months. This marks the 3rd cold season after the conflict between the state and the group began on 7 October 2023, when militants attacked Israeli territory and murdered approximately twelve hundred individuals and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one others into Gaza.

The local health authority reports more than seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent military campaign.