RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than 20,000 Palestinians have died during Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, health officials said Friday. It is the latest indication of the enormous cost of the conflict, as Israel expands its ground offensive and deploys tens of thousands more people to flee their homes.
The deaths, representing nearly 1% of the territory's pre-war population, are just a measure of the devastation wrought by the conflict, which over 11 weeks has displaced nearly 85% of Gaza's population and leveled swathes of the tiny coastal enclave.
More than half a million people in Gaza – a quarter of the population – are starving, according to a report from the United Nations and other organizations on Thursday, describing the crisis caused by Israel's bombing and siege of the area in response to the Hamas attack October 7th attack.
Despite the emergency, a U.N. Security Council vote on aid deliveries and terms for a ceasefire was postponed again late Thursday after days of high-level negotiations.
The United States, which has veto power, has resisted calls for an immediate ceasefire and for the United Nations to be given sole responsibility for controlling aid deliveries. Israel insists that it must be able to control goods entering Gaza for security reasons.
The US said it would support a revised resolution that calls for “the creation of the conditions” for a ceasefire rather than an immediate end to the fighting. Other countries backed a tougher text and said diplomats would need to consult their governments before a vote expected later on Friday.
Martin Griffiths, UN humanitarian chief, lamented the world's inaction.
“That such a brutal conflict was allowed to continue for so long – despite widespread condemnation, physical and psychological distress and massive destruction – is an indelible stain on our collective conscience,” he wrote in a post on X, the social media platform , formerly known as Twitter.
Israel, under the protection of the United States, has defied international pressure to scale back its offensive and said it would continue until Hamas, the militant group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years, is destroyed.
The military said months of fighting lie ahead in southern Gaza, an area that is home to the vast majority of the enclave's 2.3 million people, many of whom were ordered to flee fighting in the north in earlier phases of the war .
Since then, evacuation orders have pushed displaced civilians into smaller and smaller areas in the south while troops concentrate on the town of Khan Younis, Gaza's second largest city. The military announced late Thursday that it was deploying more ground troops, including combat engineers, to Khan Younis to attack Hamas militants above ground and in tunnels.
On Friday, the military ordered tens of thousands of residents to leave their homes in Burej, an urban refugee camp, and surrounding communities within the area where Israel had initially told people to flee.
The air and ground campaign also continued in the north, although Israel said it was in the final stages of driving out Hamas fighters there.
Mustafa Abu Taha, a Palestinian agricultural worker, said ground fighting and airstrikes continued in his hard-hit Shijaiyah neighborhood in Gaza City, adding that many areas had become inaccessible due to massive destruction from airstrikes.
“They hit anything that moves,” he said of the Israeli forces.
In the city of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, an airstrike on a house killed six people, including a toddler, according to Associated Press journalists who saw the bodies at a hospital. Rafah is one of the few places in Gaza not under evacuation orders, but is under almost daily Israeli attacks.
Gaza's health ministry said on Friday that it had documented 20,057 deaths in the fighting. No distinction is made between combatant and civilian deaths. It was previously said that around two thirds of the dead were women or minors. It said 53,320 Palestinians were injured.
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip at Rafah Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
Palestinians line up for a free meal in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023. International aid groups say Gaza is suffering from a shortage of food, medicine and other basic goods due to the two-and-a-half-month war between Israel and Hamas. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
Israeli troops take up positions in the Gaza Strip, seen from southern Israel, Thursday, December 21, 2023. The army is fighting Palestinian militants across the Gaza Strip in the war sparked by Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Palestinians mourn relatives killed in the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip outside a mortuary in Khan Younis on Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)
Israel blames Hamas for the high number of civilian deaths during its intensive air and ground operations, citing the group's use of crowded residential areas for military purposes.
Israel declared war after Hamas militants crossed the border, killing about 1,200 people and kidnapping 240 others. According to the Israeli military, 139 of its soldiers were killed in the ground offensive. It said it had killed thousands of Hamas militants, including about 2,000 in the last three weeks, but no evidence was provided to back up that claim.
Meanwhile, telephone and internet services were gradually restored late Thursday after the latest 35-hour communications outage.
Repeated communications failures have hampered aid deliveries at a time of unprecedented humanitarian needs in Gaza.
Hunger surpassed even the near-famines of recent years in Afghanistan and Yemen, said Thursday's report, warning that the threat of famine is “increasing by the day” and citing inadequate aid to the Gaza Strip hunger is blamed.
“It’s not getting any worse,” said Arif Husain, chief economist at the U.N. World Food Program. “I have never seen anything on the scale of what is happening in Gaza. And at this speed.”
The war has also caused the health sector in Gaza to collapse.
According to the World Health Organization, only nine of the 36 health facilities are still partially operational, all located in the south.
The agency reported a rapid increase in infectious diseases in Gaza, including a five-fold increase in diarrheal illnesses, particularly among young children, compared to prewar numbers. It said there was an increase in upper respiratory infections, meningitis, skin rashes, scabies, lice and chickenpox.
“With the health system in tatters, those facing the deadly combination of hunger and disease have few options,” it said.
WHO aid workers reported “unbearable” scenes in two hospitals they visited in the northern Gaza Strip: bedridden patients with untreated wounds crying out for water, the few remaining doctors and nurses running out of supplies and bodies lying lined up in the yard.
Israeli forces have stormed a number of health facilities in the north in recent weeks, holding men for questioning and expelling others.
On Thursday, troops stormed the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance center in the Jabaliya refugee camp, taking away medics and ambulance teams, the group said. On Friday, the Red Crescent said the military had released some of the medics, including women, but eight remained in custody and their whereabouts were unknown.
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Magdy reported from Cairo.