Strong cold-season gusts caused walls to collapse onto fragile shelters sheltering people displaced by war in Gaza, killing no fewer than 4 people. This tragedy highlights the perilous living conditions that continue after more than 24 months of devastating bombardment and critical shortages of aid.
Although a truce has been in effect since last fall, humanitarian organizations state that residents do not have the adequate shelter necessary to withstand frequent cold-weather events.
Medical staff at Gaza City's largest medical facility, which received the victims, reported on Tuesday that the deceased were a pair of adult females, a girl, and a male adult.
In a separate incident, the Gaza health ministry stated on the same day that a 12-month-old infant died of hypothermia overnight.
"The world has enabled us to witness loss of life in all its forms," stated a family member after the funeral. "While it is correct the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed all imaginable reasons of fatality in the world in the Gaza Strip."
As per the medical center, three people of a one family — elderly Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an eight-metre high wall collapsed on top of their tent in a coastal area of Gaza City. At least 5 additional people were injured in the incident.
Their relatives on that day began removing the debris that had entombed their family and reconstructing the temporary homes for survivors.
The UN and its humanitarian partners were handing out shelter kits, tarps, warm covers and clothes as well as food and hygiene items throughout Gaza, stated the relevant UN coordination body.
Most of the population live in improvised tents since their houses were reduced to rubble during the war. Humanitarian organizations say an insufficient amount of shelter materials are entering Gaza under the ceasefire.
The Gaza health ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says over four hundred and forty individuals have been fatally shot by gunfire and their remains taken to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The authority maintains comprehensive casualty data that are considered generally reliable by international bodies and independent experts.
A spokesperson for UNICEF, representing the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on that day that no fewer than 100 minors under the age of 18 – 60 males and forty girls – had been lost their lives after the ceasefire started because of armed actions, including unmanned aerial vehicle attacks, airstrikes, artillery fire and use of live ammunition. These numbers, he said, reflected cases where sufficient details had been compiled to justify recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He added that hundreds of minors had been wounded.
"Although 'bombings and gunfire have decreased' under the truce, they have not stopped," the spokesperson informed journalists at a press conference in the Swiss city by video link from the Strip. "Therefore what the international community now calls calm would be considered a crisis in any other place," he concluded.
Gaza’s residents of more than 2 million people has been fighting to keep the cold weather and bad weather away while enduring shortages of humanitarian aid and a absence of more substantial transitional shelter, which is urgently needed throughout the winter months. It’s the third cold season since the war involving Israel and the group began on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into Israeli territory and murdered around twelve hundred people and took hostage two hundred and fifty-one more into Gaza.
The local health authority says over seventy-one thousand four hundred people have been killed in Israel’s military campaign.
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