Strong winter winds brought walls down upon fragile tents housing Palestinians displaced by conflict in Gaza, killing no fewer than four individuals. This tragedy underscores the perilous living conditions that continue after more than 24 months of intense bombardment and critical lack of humanitarian assistance.
While a ceasefire has been active since October, aid groups report that Palestinians broadly lack the sufficient shelter necessary to survive frequent cold-weather events.
Medical staff at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which received the victims, said on Tuesday that the dead were two women, a young female, and a male adult.
Separately, the Gaza health ministry stated on the same day that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight.
"International actors has allowed us to witness death in every possible way," said a family member following the funeral. "It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."
According to Shifa hospital, 3 members of a single household — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his teenage relative, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an eight-metre tall wall collapsed on top of their tent in a area near the sea of the city. At least five additional people were hurt in the event.
Family members on Tuesday started removing the rubble that had buried their family and rebuilding the tent shelters for those who remained.
The UN and its aid organization allies were distributing tents, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene items across Gaza, stated the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.
Most of the population reside in improvised tents since their houses were turned into ruins over the course of the war. Humanitarian organizations say not enough building supplies are entering Gaza under the truce.
Local health authorities, which is part of the Hamas-run government, says more than four hundred and forty individuals have been fatally shot by Israeli fire and their remains taken to hospitals after the ceasefire began. The authority maintains detailed fatality data that are considered generally reliable by UN agencies and outside analysts.
James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on Tuesday that no fewer than 100 children under the age of 18 – 60 males and 40 females – had been killed after the truce began due to military operations, such as drone strikes, air raids, artillery fire and employment of bullets. Those figures, he explained, represented incidents where enough details had been compiled to justify recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He added that many hundreds of children had been injured.
"Although 'bombings and gunfire have slowed' during the truce, they have not ceased," Elder informed reporters at a press conference in Geneva by video from Gaza City. "Therefore what the international community now terms quiet would be considered a crisis anywhere else," he concluded.
Gaza’s residents of more than 2 million people has been struggling to fend off the freezing temperatures and bad weather at bay while facing lack of assistance and a lack of sturdier temporary housing, which is badly needed during the colder season. This marks the third winter after the war involving the state and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when militants attacked southern Israel and killed approximately 1,200 individuals and abducted two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.
The local health authority reports more than seventy-one thousand four hundred Palestinians have been fatally injured in Israel’s military campaign.
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