The ongoing genocide in Gaza has now killed more than 45,000 people on Monday, with 52 more people killed in the past 24 hours across the bombed-out strip, as the Ministry of Health in the besieged and battered Palestinian enclave has confirmed.
Mounting Civilian Deaths
The Gaza Health Ministry added that more than half of the fatalities are women and children. It does not include the 11,000 missing Palestinians who are thought to be trapped under the rubble. Israel claims it has killed more than 17,000 resistance members, without providing evidence.
Since the start of the war, the Gaza Health Ministry said 45,028 people have been killed and 106,962 have been wounded. However, the real toll is higher because thousands of bodies are still buried under rubble or in areas that medics cannot access. The current death toll represents nearly 2% of Gaza’s pre-war population of about 2.3 million.
Rescue operations continue to recover the bodies of 10 people, including a family of four, from under the rubble in areas such as eastern Gaza City’s Shijaiyah neighborhood in an overnight Israeli strike in Gaza City.
A separate strike at a school Sunday in the southern city of Khan Younis killed at least 13 people, including six children and two women, according to Nasser Hospital, where the bodies were taken.
United Nations Concern
The amount of loss of life in Gaza is unbearable among the Palestinians who have been living through this war for more than 14 months. Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency), visited hospitals treating injured survivors. She said she met with children injured in Sunday’s strike on the school-turned-shelter. They included a 17-year-old girl who suffered a severe leg injury and shrapnel wounds. She survived along with her twin sister and three other sisters. Their mother died under the rubble. She also met with two siblings aged 2 and 5 at Nasser Hospital, where the casualties were taken. Both children have severe head and body injuries, including a 2-year-old girl who lost vision in one eye.
Journalists are targeted
The targeting of journalists and media workers has also drawn international outrage. Al Jazeera journalist Ahmed Bakar al-Louh, 39, was killed Sunday in a strike on a point for Gaza’s civil defense agency while covering a rescue operation in central Gaza. They carried his body through the street from the hospital, his blue bulletproof vest resting atop. The strike also killed three civil defense workers, including the local head of the agency, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
The Israeli military said its strike had targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad members “who were operating in a command and control center embedded in the offices of the ‘Civil Defense’ organization in Nuseirat.” It accused the journalist of having been a member of Islamic Jihad, an accusation his colleagues in Gaza denied. The International Federation of Journalists said last week that 104 journalists and media workers have been killed so far in 2024, with more than half of them perishing during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
The group said that since Oct. 7, 2023, at least 138 had been killed, including 55 Palestinian media professionals in the calendar year.
Countering False Claims
Israel alleges Hamas is responsible for the civilian death toll because it operates from within civilian areas in the densely populated Gaza Strip. Israel continues to argue that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure as shields, citing alleged operations from schools, hospitals, and residential buildings. However, rights groups and Palestinians blame Israel for failing to take sufficient precautions to avoid civilian deaths.
Ceasefire Efforts
The war, which began after Hamas’s incursion into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, caused around 1,200 deaths and abducted another 250. Food, water, and medical supplies are running critically low, with UN agencies warning of mass starvation and disease outbreaks.
Diplomatic efforts to broker a ceasefire have gained momentum, with Qatar, Egypt, and the United States leading negotiations. Mediators have said there appears to be more willingness from both sides to conclude a cease-fire.