The deaths in Gaza from the war between Israel and Hamas exceed 45,000, according to Palestinians

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The death toll in the Gaza Strip in the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas militants has surpassed 45,000, Palestinian health officials said Monday, after that 52 bodies arrived at hospitals in the bombed area in the last 24 hours.

Gaza’s Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count, but has said that more than half of the dead are women and children. The Israeli army claims to have killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The Health Ministry said 45,028 people had been killed and 106,962 wounded since the start of the war. He has said the real figure is higher because thousands of bodies remain buried under rubble or in areas that doctors cannot access. This war is by far the deadliest of the conflicts between Israel and Hamas, and has so far killed approximately 2% of the approximately 2.3 million people who lived in Gaza before the war.

Among the dead reported in the total count were 10 people, including a family of four, who were killed in an overnight Israeli strike in Gaza City, Palestinian doctors said.

The Sunday night attack hit a house in the eastern Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City, according to the Health Ministry’s emergency service. Rescuers recovered the bodies of 10 people from the rubble, including those of two parents and their two children, he said.

Israel claims Hamas is responsible for civilian deaths because it operates from civilian areas in the populous Gaza Strip. Palestinians and rights groups say Israel has not taken enough precautions to avoid civilian casualties.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping another 250. Israel responded with heavy bombing and a ground raid into the Palestinian enclave. Around 100 hostages still remain in Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead. Most of the others were freed during a ceasefire last year.

A separate attack on a school on Sunday in the southern city of Khan Younis killed at least 13 people, including six children and two women, according to the Nasser Hospital where the bodies were taken. The hospital initially reported that the attack had killed 16 people, but later revised the death toll as the other three bodies came from a separate attack on a house.

The Israeli military said it had “conducted a precise strike against Hamas terrorists operating inside a command and control center embedded within a compound” that had served as a school in Khan Younis. He did not provide evidence.

In the Nuseirat urban refugee camp in central Gaza, mourners gathered for the funeral of a Palestinian journalist working for the Qatari television station Al Jazeera, who was killed Sunday in an attack on an agency base. Gaza civil defense. They carried his body down the street from the hospital, with his blue bulletproof vest draped over it.

The attack also killed three civil defense workers, including the agency’s local head, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Civil defense is Gaza’s main rescue agency and operates under the Hamas-led government.

Al Jazeera said Ahmad Baker Al-Louh, 39, was covering the rescue operation for a family injured in a previous bombing when he was killed.

The International Federation of Journalists said last week that 104 journalists and media workers have been killed so far in 2024, more than half of them in the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

The group said that since the start of the war on October 7, 2023, at least 138 had been killed, including 55 Palestinian media professionals in the calendar year.

The Israeli army said its attack targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants “operating in a command and control center embedded in the offices of the ‘Civil Defense’ organization in Nuseirat.” He accused the journalist of having been a member of Islamic Jihad, an accusation his colleagues in Gaza denied.

Gaza’s civil defense also rejected claims that militants were operating from the site.

“We were stunned by the declaration of the Israeli occupation,” Mahmoud al-Lawh, the journalist’s cousin, told The Associated Press. “These claims are lies and deceptions to cover up this crime.”