Photo: Gaza in October 2023, by WAFA, WikiPalestine, Wikimedia Commons
by Rob Picheta
More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war on Hamas following the group’s October 7 attack, the health ministry in the enclave said Thursday, yet another dark milestone in the10-month-old conflict.
The ministry said 40 people had died in Gaza during the past24 hours, taking the total number of deaths since October 7 to 40,005 – about one in every 55 people in the enclave. More than 92,401 have been injured.
The health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its figures but says most of the dead are women and children. Israel said last month that it had killed more than 17,000 combatants in Gaz asince the start of the war. CNN cannot independently verify the ministry’s numbers.
In addition, at least another 10,000 people are missing and believed to be buried under rubble in Gaza, the Gaza government’s media office said earlier this week.
The soaring figures give a window into the daily suffering, malnutrition and volatility in Gaza after 10 months of conflict.
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has described it as “a very grim milestone at the world’s watch,” on X, adding that it is “a direct result of a collective failure to reach a ceasefire.”
And the milestone has been passed at a particularly unpredictable point in the conflict. A new round of ceasefire talks are due to begin Thursday, after the killings of senior figures in Hamas and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah upended the leadership of both organizations and made the negotiations appear precarious.
The news follows an especially deadly weekend for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. At least 93 people were killed overnight into Saturday when an Israeli strike hit a school and mosque in the eastern part of Gaza City where displaced people were sheltering, according to local officials. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed to CNN that it hit the compound, saying its air force “precisely struck Hamas terrorists operating within a Hamas command and control center embedded” in the building.
Israeli military officials have said they try to minimize harm to civilians in Gaza and that Hamas bears the blame for using civilians as “human shields.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed to CNN that it hit the compound and said that “at least 19 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were eliminated” in the strike.
The strike was almost universally condemned, including by some of Israel’s closest allies.
Thursday marks “a grim milestone for the world,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said after the figures were announced. “Most of the dead are women and children. This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defense Forces to comply with the rules of war.”
Read the whole article at:
https://edition.cnn.com/newsletters/meanwhile-in-middle-east
