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Strong winter winds collapsed walls onto flimsy tents for Palestinians displaced by war in Gaza, killing at least four people, as dangerous living conditions persist after more than two years of devastating Israeli bombardment and aid shortfalls.
A ceasefire has been in effect since October, but aid groups say that Palestinians broadly lack the shelter necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.
The dead include two women, a girl and a man, officials at the Shifa hospital, Gaza City’s largest, which received the bodies, said on Tuesday.
The Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday that a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight.
Three members of a family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an eight-metre (26ft) high wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area of Gaza City, Shifa hospital said. At least five others were injured.
Their relatives on Tuesday began removing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.
“The world has allowed us to witness death in all its forms,” Bassel Hamouda said after the family funeral. “It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip.”
The UN and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene items across Gaza, said the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.
The majority of Palestinians live in makeshift tents since their homes were reduced to rubble during the Israel-Gaza war. Aid groups say not enough shelter materials are entering Gaza during the truce.
The Gaza health ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 people were killed by Israeli fire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.
James Elder, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef, said on Tuesday that at least 100 children under the age of 18 – 60 boys and 40 girls – had been killed since the truce began due to military operations, including drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. Those figures, he said, reflected incidents where enough details had been compiled to warrant recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He said hundreds of children had been wounded.
While “bombings and shootings have slowed” during the ceasefire, they have not stopped, Elder told reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from Gaza City. “So what the world now calls calm would be considered a crisis anywhere else,” he said.
Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has been struggling to keep the cold weather and storms at bay while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed during the winter months. It’s the third winter since the war between Israel and Hamas started on 7 October 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people and abducted 251 others into Gaza.
Gaza’s health ministry says more than 71,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.
