More than 55,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, Gaza health officials say
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The Palestinian death toll from the 20-month Israel-Hamas war has climbed past 55,000, the Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday.
The ministry doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants, but has said that women and children make up more than half the dead.
It's a grim milestone in the war that began with Hamas' attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and shows no sign of ending. Israel says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas, accusing the militants of hiding among civilians, because they operate in populated areas.
The ministry says 55,104 people have been killed since the start of the war and 127,394 wounded. Many more are believed to be buried under the rubble or in areas that are inaccessible to local medics.
The Health Ministry is part of Gaza's Hamas-run government, but staffed by medical professionals who maintain and publish detailed records. Its tolls from previous conflicts have largely aligned with those of independent experts, though Israel has questioned the ministry's figures.
Israeli forces have destroyed vast areas of Gaza , displaced about 90% of its population and in recent weeks have transformed more than half of the coastal territory into a military buffer zone that includes the now mostly uninhabited southern city of Rafah.
A 2½-month blockade imposed by Israel when it ended a ceasefire with Hamas raised fears of famine and was slightly eased in May. The launch of a new Israeli- and U.S.-backed aid system has been marred by chaos and violence , and the U.N. says it has struggled to bring in food because of Israeli restrictions, a breakdown of law and order, and widespread looting.
Israel accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid, but the U.N. and aid groups deny there is any systematic diversion of aid to militants.
Hamas has suffered major setbacks militarily, and Israel says it has killed more than 20,000 militants, without providing evidence. The militants still hold 55 hostages — less than half of them believed to be alive — and control areas outside of military zones despite facing rare protests earlier this year.
The war began when Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7 attack and abducted 251 hostages. More than half the captives have been released in ceasefires or other deals. Israeli forces have rescued eight and recovered the remains of dozens more.
Israel's military campaign, one of the deadliest and most destructive since World War II, has transformed large parts of cities into mounds of rubble . Hundreds of thousands of people are living in squalid tent camps and unused schools, and the health system has been gutted, even as it copes with waves of wounded from Israeli strikes .
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in return for more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and a complete Israeli withdrawal. It has offered to hand over power to a politically independent Palestinian committee.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected those terms, saying that Israel will only agree to temporary ceasefires to facilitate the return of hostages. He has vowed to continue the war until all the hostages are returned and Hamas is defeated or disarmed and sent into exile.
Netanyahu says Israel will control Gaza indefinitely and facilitate what he refers to as the voluntary emigration of much of its population to other countries. The Palestinians and most of the international community reject such plans, viewing them as forcible expulsion that could violate international law .
___
Fatma Khaled reported from Cairo.
___
Follow AP's war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
US FDA approves UroGen's bladder cancer drug
By Padmanabhan Ananthan and Kamal Choudhury (Reuters) -The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved UroGen Pharma's drug to treat a type of bladder cancer, providing an alternative treatment as opposed to traditional surgical procedures. U.S.-listed shares of the Israel-based company were up about 50% in afternoon trading. The approval follows a late-stage trial with 223 patients, in which 78% of the participants showed a complete response, meaning all signs of cancer disappeared in response to the treatment. The drug, branded Zusduri, will be the first to get approval to treat a type of bladder cancer that has not spread beyond the inner layers of the organ. The disease primarily affects older population. Scotiabank analyst George Farmer called the decision a "major positive outcome," noting that regulators were "moved by the quality of the clinical trial results, despite lack of solid randomized data". The FDA appreciated the non-surgical treatment option, describing it as "a huge win for patients with recurrent low-grade tumors" as it involves "a simple drug instillation in a doctor's office," Farmer added. Zusduri is a gel-based formulation that keeps chemotherapy in the bladder for a longer duration, aiming to reduce tumor recurrence and avoid repeated surgeries. UroGen said it expects the treatment to be available in the U.S. on or around July 1. Last month, an FDA advisory panel narrowly opposed approval of the drug citing concerns that a single arm study for efficacy might not be enough to indicate sustained benefits. The panel warned that such precedents could be problematic given existing surgical alternatives. The disease, a type of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, affects about 82,000 people in the U.S. each year, with around 59,000 experiencing a recurrence, according to UroGen. Current standard-of-care treatments include surgical procedures such as transurethral resection of bladder tumor, in which doctors insert a thin tube through the urethra to remove the tumor.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Over 100 reported killed in Gaza in 24 hours as telecoms go down
More than 100 people were reported killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza within 24 hours, as deadly incidents near aid distribution sites and a major communications outage deepened the crisis in the war-shattered Palestinian territory on Thursday. The Health Ministry in Gaza, controlled by Hamas, reported 103 deaths and 427 injuries in the past day alone. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, and the figures could not be independently verified. Since the start of the war on October 7, 2023, which was triggered by a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that killed around 1,200 people and saw more than 250 taken hostage, more than 55,200 people have been killed in Gaza and over 127,800 injured, according to the ministry. Palestinians reported that Israeli forces opened fire near aid distribution positions, while a humanitarian foundation said Hamas launched a deadly attack on its staff. The Palestinian news agency WAFA said at least 13 people were killed and around 200 injured at an aid centre in the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza. The Hamas-run Health Ministry confirmed the incident, but put the toll at 10 dead and at least 120 wounded. Separately, WAFA reported five more deaths in the Sudaniya area north-west of Gaza City, where people were waiting for food assistance. The Israeli military has not commented on the incidents. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), supported by Israel and the United States, began distributing aid last month following a near three-month Israeli blockade. The initiative aims to prevent Hamas from diverting aid, according to Israeli officials. However, the operation has drawn criticism from the UN and humanitarian organizations, who cite safety and access concerns. The GHF said that a Hamas attack on one of its staff buses killed eight Palestinian employees and injured several others on Wednesday evening. The team was en route to a distribution centre west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. The foundation stated that some employees may have been taken hostage and that it was still gathering information. "These were aid workers. Humanitarians. Fathers, brothers, sons, and friends," GHF said, condemning what it called a "heinous and deliberate attack." The organization urged the international community to hold Hamas accountable, saying its staff had been targeted simply for delivering food to Palestinians. WAFA, citing medical sources, reported that 224 people have been killed and over 1,850 injured around aid distribution points since May 27. 'The points have become traps for mass killings,' the agency said. Communications blackout adds to chaos Also on Thursday, Gaza's last functioning fibre-optic network was damaged in an attack, resulting in a complete outage of internet and landline services, according to the Palestinian Telecommunications Authority. WAFA said the blackout would have severe humanitarian and social consequences and called for immediate restoration. Telecommunications have been repeatedly disrupted during the conflict, hampering relief coordination and civilian communication. Israel has been engaged in a sustained military campaign in Gaza for 20 months, with the stated goal of eliminating Hamas and securing the release of remaining hostages. A new major ground offensive was launched nearly a month ago. The campaign has drawn international criticism, including from Israel's close allies, over the mounting civilian toll and the humanitarian situation on the ground.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Scientists develop breath test to ID people and check health
Breathing into a bag or tube usually means you've been pulled over by police who want to check for drinking and driving can lead to the loss of a driving licence or even imprisonment. But a team of scientists have found every breath you take to be like a fingerprint that discloses who you are with 97% accuracy and can be assessed for "insights" into physical and even mental health. "You would think that breathing has been measured and analyzed in every way," said Noam Sobel, one of a team of researchers based at the Weizmann Institute of Science near Tel Aviv who said they "stumbled upon a completely new way to look at respiration" they describe as "a brain readout." The researchers tracked breathing in 100 "healthy young adults" over 24 hours using a "lightweight wearable device" they made and found that the "high-level accuracy" of the tests "remained consistent across multiple retests conducted over a two-year period." Most breathing tests last less than half an hour, meaning such "brief snapshots" cannot assess "subtle patterns," according to the team, which had its findings published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology. "I thought it would be really hard to identify someone because everyone is doing different things, like running, studying, or resting," said researcher Timna Soroka. But according to the team, the breathing test rivals "the precision of some voice recognition technologies." "It turns out their breathing patterns were remarkably distinct," Soroka said, following the longer-than-usual test, which not only could identify people but provide signals related to health. The Israel-based team said that the tests showed breathing to be "correlated with a person's body mass index, sleep-wake cycle, levels of depression and anxiety, and even behavioural traits." "For example, participants who scored relatively higher on anxiety questionnaires had shorter inhales and more variability in the pauses between breaths during sleep," the researchers reported. The team's laboratory's prior investigations of olfaction in animals got them thinking that since mammals' brains process odour information during inhalation, there could be some value in testing whether there people have a unique breathing pattern in the same way each brain is unique. The findings follow the development over the past decade of gadgets that can identify people by how they walk, with so-called gait recognition technology used by police in China in street cameras since at least 2018. It all means that with every breath you take and every move you make, they might some day be watching - and identifying - you.
