The killing of civilians in Gaza has reached levels unprecedented in recent history, monitoring groups said, as Israel continues to bomb the besieged coastal enclave more than three months after the war began.
The British-based charity Oxfam said on Thursday that the daily death toll of Palestinians in Israel's war on Gaza exceeds that of any other major conflict in the 21st century, while survivors remain at a high rate due to hunger, disease and cold, as well as ongoing problems Israeli bombings are at risk.
“Israel's military kills an average of 250 Palestinians per day, far exceeding the daily death toll in any other major conflict in recent years,” Oxfam said in a statement.
For comparison, the charity provided a list of average deaths per day in other conflicts since the turn of the century: 96.5 in Syria, 51.6 in Sudan, 50.8 in Iraq, 43.9 in Ukraine, 23.8 in Afghanistan and 15.8 in Yemen.
Oxfam said the crisis was further exacerbated by Israel's restrictions on the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip, where only 10 percent of the weekly food aid needed arrives. This poses a serious risk of starvation for those who survive the relentless bombardment, it said.
Also on Thursday, U.S.-based human rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) released its 2024 World Report, which said that civilians in Gaza “were targeted, assaulted, abused and killed last year at levels unprecedented in recent history “. of Israel and Palestine”.
'war crimes'
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 23,469 Palestinians have been killed and 59,604 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7.
In the last 24-hour reporting period, Israeli forces carried out 10 mass killings in the Gaza Strip, leaving 112 people dead and 194 injured, the ministry added. About 7,000 people remain missing under the rubble and are presumed dead.
“The heinous crimes committed by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups since October 7 are the abhorrent legacy of decades of impunity for unlawful attacks and Israel’s systematic repression of Palestinians,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at HRW .
“How many more civilians must suffer or be killed as a result of war crimes before arms-supplying countries pull the plug and take other action to end these atrocities?” he asked.
This came as South Africa presented its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Thursday, accusing the country of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza, an accusation that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed as “hypocrisy and lies.” . .
In its report, HRW found that Israel's war on Gaza “involved acts of collective punishment amounting to war crimes and involving the use of starvation as a method of warfare,” including cutting off vital services such as water and electricity and blocking the entry of key humanitarian workers Help.
Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, in the first eight months of 2023, incidents of settler violence against Palestinians and their property reached the highest daily average since the United Nations began recording this data in 2006, according to HRW. At least 3,291 Palestinians were detained, according to the Israeli Prison Service they were held in administrative detention without charge or trial.
“The repression of Palestinians by the Israeli authorities, carried out as part of a policy to maintain the rule of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians, amounts to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution,” HRW said.
“Gaza is different from space”
War damage mapping experts have also found that the war in Gaza is now one of the deadliest and most destructive in recent history.
The war has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition killed in its three-year campaign against ISIL (ISIS), according to an analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by the CUNY Graduate Center and Oregon State University.
According to a report by The Associated Press, the offensive has caused more destruction than the destruction of Syria's Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine's Mariupol or, proportionately, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II.
According to satellite data collected by the research group, the Israeli offensive likely either damaged or destroyed more than two-thirds of all buildings in the northern Gaza Strip and a quarter of the buildings in the southern Khan Younis area.
This includes tens of thousands of households as well as schools, hospitals, mosques and shops. U.N. monitors said about 70 percent of school buildings across the Gaza Strip were damaged.
“Gaza is now a different color than space. It has a different structure,” said Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center, who has worked to map destruction in several war zones.