The number of people killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7 has risen to 23,210, the health Ministry in the blockaded territory reported on Tuesday.
That staggering death toll means that 1% of the enclave’s total pre-war population of 2.27 million people has now has been wiped out.
The majority of victims are children and women, according to health officials.
According to the ministry, an additional 59,167 people have been injured, which means more than one in 40 Gazans have now been wounded in the conflict.
The United Nations’ World Health Organisation (WHO) fears that hospitals in the southern and central Gaza Strip will collapse the way they did in the north.
“What we’re seeing is really worrying around a lot of the hospitals and an intensification of hostilities, very close to the European Gaza hospital,” Sean Casey, WHO Emergency Medical Teams coordinator in Gaza, told a Geneva press briefing by video link.
“We are seeing the health system collapse at a very rapid pace,” he added, stating that an estimated 600 patients had fled one facility.
He also stressed that the referrals of patients out of Gaza are “not working” and expressed “huge concern” about 66 health workers detained by Israeli forces.
Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Palestinian group Hamas in October.
The onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.
An Israeli human rights group has accused the government of starving more than two million people in the Gaza Strip amid its deadly military offensive on the Palestinian enclave.
“The 2.2 million people of Gaza are going hungry. This is not a byproduct of war but a direct result of Israel’s declared policy, which denies them food,” B’Tselem said in a statement on Monday.
The rights group added Israeli authorities are “letting in only a fraction of the amount entering before the war, with limitations on the types of goods” instead of allowing enough food into the territory.
“Allowing food into Gaza is not an act of kindness but a positive obligation under IHL (International Humanitarian Law),” B’Tselem said, adding, “Refusing to comply with this duty constitutes a war crime.”
