The war on Gaza has displaced more than two million people, the majority of the Strip’s population.
Israel has committed more than 1,944 massacres and killed nearly 10,000 children in Gaza since the beginning of the war on October 7, the besieged enclave’s authorities said on Wednesday.
The disturbing figures came on the 94th day of the brutal Israeli war on Gaza that has reduced the majority of the coastal enclave to rubble.
Israel has killed more than 23,210 people while injuring 59,167 others and 7,000 are believed to be trapped under the rubble.
The toll includes 326 medical staff, 45 firefighters, and 112 journalists, Gaza’s authorities confirmed.
The war on Gaza has displaced more than two million people, the majority of the Strip’s population, after partially destroying 290,000 residential units and completely destroying 69,000 others.
Israel had ordered approximately 1.1 million people to evacuate northern Gaza to the south on October 12, 2023 and occupation forces raided the Al-Shifa Medical complex, the largest in Gaza, the following month.
Israel had forced thousands of displaced and wounded Palestinians to evacuate the medical facility, which served as a shelter during the first days of Israel’s war on Gaza.
The attacks on the south have been on the rise since late last year despite Israel declaring the area to be a safer zone.
For more than three months, displaced Palestinians have been sheltering inside buildings run by the United Nations Palestinian Refugees Agency (UNRWA), which witnessed at least 63 direct attacks, the organisation said in its latest flash update on Tuesday.
The facilities include schools, 90% of which are being used by displaced Palestinians in Gaza as shelters. As of January 5, Israel killed 142 UNRWA staff in Gaza.
The schools have been among Israel’s targets since the start of the war, with 135 schools sustaining minor damage, 126 moderately damaged, and 99 others sustaining major damage.
The war has also disrupted education in Gaza, with 4,119 students and 221 children killed, according to the UN.
Meanwhile, doctors in Gaza have been running around the clock to treat tens of thousands of wounded Palestinians inside the collapsed medical sector.
The health sector has been significantly damaged by the non-stop bombardment and complete siege on the Strip, with only 15 out of 36 hospitals partially functioning.
Inpatient departments’ occupancy rates reached 206% whereas the intensive care units reached 250%, the UN said in its flash update. On Sunday, Gaza’s government said 6,000 wounded Palestinians require urgent evacuation for treatment in neighbouring Egypt.
“Only 10 to 20 wounded are allowed to be transferred daily, and this small number exacerbates the suffering of the wounded, whose numbers are increasing on a daily basis,” the Gaza media office said.
Medical and food aid has barely reached any of Gaza’s 2.2 million population, with truckloads of assistance piling up in Egypt awaiting the greenlight to cross into the Strip.
Only 131 aid trucks entered Gaza through the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings on Tuesday, significantly lower than the pre-war daily average of 500 trucks, according to the UN.
On December 18, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report saying that Israel has been using starvation as a “weapon of war” in Gaza.
“For over two months, Israel has been depriving Gaza’s population of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by high-ranking Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as a method of warfare,” Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at HRW, said in the report.
HRW also described Israel’s blockade of Gaza as “a war crime”, noting that Israel “is compounding its collective punishment of Palestinian civilians.”
