GAZA STRIP: The Health Ministry in Gaza said on Monday that at least 37,347 people have been killed in the territory during more than eight months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes at least 10 deaths in the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that a total of 85,372 people had been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
Dire shortages of food and other essentials in the Gaza Strip have been exacerbated by overland access restrictions and the closure of the key Rafah crossing with Egypt since Israeli forces seized its Palestinian side in early May.
Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza has killed hundreds of family members from the same bloodline, an unprecedented toll on the small community mostly made up of refugees and their descendants.
An Associated Press investigation analyzed 10 strikes across the Gaza Strip between October and December that killed over 500 people.
Nearly every Palestinian family has suffered grievous, multiple losses.
But many have been decimated, particularly in the first months of the war.
AP geolocated and analyzed the strikes; consulted with weapons investigators; open data-analysts and legal experts; and drew on data by Airwars, a London-based conflict monitor.
They hit residential buildings and shelters with families inside. In no case was there an obvious military target or direct warning to those inside. In one case the family said they had raised a white flag on their building in a combat zone.
This war has proven even deadlier than the displacement from Israel in 1948, said Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American historian at Columbia University, when 20,000 were killed in what is known as the Nakbah
“I don’t think anything like this has happened in modern Palestinian history,” said Khalidi.
In Gaza City, medics at Al-Ahli Hospital said on Saturday at least five people were killed in two separate airstrikes, and witnesses reported tank shelling in the southern neighbourhood of Zeitun.
At least one strike hit Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, residents said.
Palestinian officials in the far-southern city of Rafah reported tank shelling early on Monday.
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, called for “further concrete measures by Israel to address longstanding issues” on humanitarian needs.
Gazans “urgently need food, water, sanitation, shelter, and healthcare, with many living near piles of solid waste, heightening health risks,” Laerke said.
