The death toll in Gaza has risen to 10,000, the Health Ministry says
In just under a month, Israeli strikes have killed more than 10,000 people in Gaza and injured more than 25,000 others, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Monday.
The rising death toll as a result of the Israeli bombardment includes more than 4,100 children, according to the ministry, which operates under the political arm of Hamas. The department’s figures could not be independently verified, but a Pentagon spokesman, Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder acknowledged Monday that “we know the numbers are in the thousands.”
Last month, President Biden cast doubt on the Health Department’s death toll figures without offering an explanation. However, the statistics were deemed credible enough for the US State Department to quote them in a statement report released this year and which covered previous conflicts.
Following Mr. Biden’s comments, the Health Department released a list of the names, ages, genders and ID numbers of everyone it counted in the death toll, excluding 281 whose remains were unidentifiable. The list included multiple members of numerous families, including 88 from one extended family.
Even before the latest hostilities, more than two million people in Gaza, about half of them children, were trapped in a 16-year Israeli blockade of the territory. After Hamas launched terrorist attacks on October 7, killing more than 1,400 people and kidnapping more than 240, according to Israeli officials, Israel began a military campaign that it said was aimed at destroying the group.
The grim update on the civilian deaths came as Gaza emerged from a third communications blackout, coinciding with heavy Israeli attacks.
On Monday, the head of the United Nations urged it again an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, which paints a bleak picture. “Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children,” says Secretary General António Guterres told reporters.
“Hundreds of girls and boys are reportedly killed or injured every day,” Mr Guterres said. “More journalists have reportedly been killed in a four-week period than in any conflict in at least thirty years. More UN aid workers have been killed than in any comparable period in the history of our organization.”
In the first days of its attacks, the Israeli Air Force said this was the case dropped more than 6,000 bombs in the Gaza Strip, which covers an area about half the size of New York City.
On Monday, Mr Guterres said the bombing had hit “civilians, hospitals, refugee camps, mosques, churches and UN facilities, including shelters”.
Israeli officials have so far resisted calls from the United Nations, international aid groups and protesters in Israel and around the world for a humanitarian pause. But the need for a ceasefire is becoming more urgent by the hour, the secretary-general said, pointing to what he said were “clear violations” of international law in the conflict.
“No one is safe,” he said.